THE COMPLETE
OEATIONS AND SPEECHES

OF

HENRY W. GRADY

EDITED BY

EDWIN DuBOIS SHURTER

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS

SOUTH-WEST PUBLISHING COMPANY

Q

COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
EDWIN DuBOIS SHURTER.

. .

J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE

THIS volume of the complete orations and
speeches of Henry W. Grady has been prepared
in the belief that a separate edition of the ora
torical efforts of this gifted Southerner will be
welcomed by his many admirers ; for, without
disparagement of other speakers, Grady stands,
by common consent, as the representative South
ern orator since the Civil War. Some of his
orations were included in a Memorial volume,
an edition now exhausted, and prepared, as was
remarked by the editor, Mr. Joel Chandler Harris,
"in a great hurry." Fugitive speeches of Mr.
Grady have been printed in pamphlet form, and
four of his orations have been edited for school
and college classes in oratory, but a separate
edition of all his orations and speeches has not
before been published. The Temperance speech
in the present volume, in defense of prohibition
in Atlanta, has not, I think, heretofore ap
peared in print except in a newspaper report.

iii

M130126

PREFACE

For the text of the orations and speeches I am
indebted to the courtesy of the editors of the
Atlanta Constitution, in the pages of which the

addresses originally appeared.

E. D. S.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS,
February, 1910.

IV

CONTENTS

PAGB

INTRODUCTION : GRADY AS AN ORATOR .... 1

THE NEW SOUTH 7

A speech delivered at the banquet of the New Eng
land Society, New York, December 21, 1886.

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS 23

An address at the Dallas, Texas, State Fair, October
26, 1887.

THE " SOLID SOUTH" 65

An address given at the Augusta Exposition, Novem
ber, 1887.

A PLEA FOR PROHIBITION 98

A speech made during the Prohibition Campaign in
Atlanta, November 17, 1887.

AGAINST CENTRALIZATION 134

An oration delivered before the Literary Societies of
the University of Virginia, June 25, 1889.

THE FARMER AND THE CITIES 158

Speech at Elberton, Georgia, June, 1889.

THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH . . . .192
A speech delivered at the annual banquet of the
Boston Merchants' Association, December, 1889.

PLYMOUTH ROCK AND DEMOCRACY 221

A speech delivered before the Bay State Club, Boston,
in 1889.

V

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

INTRODUCTION1
GRADY AS AN ORATOR

HENRY WOODFIN GRADY, journalist and
orator, was born at Athens, Georgia, April 24, 1850.
He graduated from the State University, at
Athens, at the age of eighteen, and took a post
graduate course at the University of Virginia.
For some time he acted as Southern correspond
ent for the New York Herald, and later became
editor of the Rome (Georgia) Daily Commercial
and of the Atlanta Herald. His journalistic
efforts were not financially successful until, in
1880, he became editor and part owner of the
Atlanta Constitution. He remained with this
paper until his death, December 23, 1889.

To the argument that the press in modern
times has supplanted oratory, the career of
Henry W. Grady is a refutation. Journalism
was his profession, while his oratory was an in
cident ; and yet his fame and influence came

1 In part a reprint from the Editor's Masterpieces of Modern
Oratory.

1

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

chiefly through the incident. It is but a com
paratively short time since his last public ad
dress was delivered, yet even now the story of
his oratorical triumphs reads like a doubtful
tale. On December 21, 1886, he accepted an
invitation to speak on the " New South " at the
annual banquet of the New England Society, in
New York City. The reception of this speech,
both by the immediate audience and by that
larger audience reached through the press,
amounted to a sensation. The night of the
speech Grady was favorably known in his own
section ; the next morning he was receiving the
enthusiastic plaudits of the whole country. Not
excepting Mr. Bryan's effort at Chicago, — and
excelling it in sustained interest and influence, —
nothing in the history of modern oratory equals
Grady 's rocket-like flight to fame. Through this
single speech he became a national figure, and
his oratory of national renown and influence.

The better to understand Grady's oratory, let
us briefly consider his equipment, and the cause
to which his life was devoted.

Introduced to a Boston audience as "the in.
comparable orator of the day," Grady remarked,
" I am a talker by inheritance : my father was
an Irishman and my mother was a woman."
His Irish ancestry may explain his ready wit
and delicious humor, his facility and fluency in

INTRODUCTION

extempore speaking, and, in part, the ornateness
and emotionalism that characterize his speeches.
His experience as a reporter in various fields no
doubt aided him in acquiring a vocabulary, in
appreciating the power of words, and in gaining
facility in their use. Further, he must have
had the oratorical instinct early developed. At
the University of Georgia he took an active
part in the work of the literary and debating
societies, and his chief ambition was to become
" Society Orator." At the University of Virginia
his main object, says his biographer, Joel Chand
ler Harris, was to perfect himself in oratory.

Grady's style, generally, has been criticised as
excessively ornate. A leading Boston lawyer
described his speech on " The Race Problem in
the South" as a "cannon ball in full flight,
fringed with flowers." But taking his speeches
as a whole, there are more flowers than cannon-
balls. Grady's natural element was in the realm
of fancy ; he aimed to move and win his hearers,
not to drive or force them. In the prohibition
campaign in Atlanta, in 188T, Grady came out
as a strong prohibitionist, while his associate oil
the Constitution, Captain E. P. Howell, was an
equally strong antiprohibitionist. Both were on
the hustings in advocacy of their respective sides.
A reporter on the Atlanta Evening Journal con
trasted their oratory in the following description,

3

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

which is interesting as a record of contemporary
impressions : —

"Howell makes you feel as if he were the
commander of an army, waving his sword and
saying, « Follow me,' and you would follow him
to the death; Grady makes you feel like you
want to be an angel and with the angels stand.
Howell will march his audience, like an army,
through flood and fire and fell ; with subtle
humor Grady will lead his audience by the still
waters where pleasant pastures lie, — and there
he will 'take the wings of the morning and fly
to the uttermost parts of the sea.' In Howell's
march the drumbeat never ceases ; in Grady's
flights you hear only the cherubim's wings.
Howell's eloquence is like a rushing mountain
stream that tears every rock and crag from its
path, gathering volume as it goes ; Grady's is
like a cumulus cloud that rises invisible as mist
till it unfolds its white banners in the sky.
Howell will doubtless deal in statistics ; Grady
will have figures, but they will not smell of the
census. They will take on the pleasing shape
that induced one of his reporters to plant a crop
of Irish potatoes on a speculation. To-night
Atlanta will be treated to a hopeful view of pro
hibition by the most eloquent optimist in the
country."

• The great cause to which Grady gave his life

4

INTRODUCTION

was that of the South and her future. Journal
ism was his profession, but the " New South "
was his passion. Of this subject he never tired,
and he discussed it " with a brilliancy, a fervor,
a versatility, and a fluency marvelous enough to
have made the reputation of half a dozen men."
He contributed largely to the higher politics of
America by lifting the plane of sectional debate
to more, candid and dignified interchanges of
opinion. It is difficult at this time to realize
the prejudice and suspicion that obtained be
tween the North and the South when Grady first
spoke in New York. While the circumstances
that made his mediation necessary have largely
disappeared, these circumstances must be borne
in mind in order to appreciate both the form and
effect of his speech. As Patrick Henry was the
war orator for the colonists, and Wendell Phillips
for the antislavery agitators, Grady was the
orator for the peacemakers. In this work of
pacification, his speeches necessarily became
largely moral appeals rather than arguments ;
hence the prevailing emotional element which
characterizes his style.

And of the New South that Grady foretold,
what a prophecy was he ! Linked to the past
by the memory of a father killed while fighting
for the Confederate cause, he grappled bravely
with war's terrible results, and turned his face

5

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

toward the future with the eye of a statesman
and the heart of a patriot. Idolized by the
South, honored and esteemed by the nation, with
a character above reproach, a soul on fire with
earnestness, and a nature peculiarly tender and
lovable, it is no exaggeration to say that, except
ing our martyred Presidents, the death of no
American has caused such universal sorrow.

6

THE NEW SOUTH

The following speech, which first brought Mr. Grady national
fame as an orator, was delivered at a banquet of the New
England Society, New York City, December 21, 1886.

" THERE was a South of slavery and secession
— that South is dead. There is a South of union
and freedom — that South, thank God, is living,
breathing, growing every hour." These words,
delivered from the immortal lips of Benjamin H.
Hill, at Tammany Hall, in 1866, true then and
truer now, I shall make my text to-night.

Mr. President and gentlemen : Let me express
to you my appreciation of the kindness by which
I am permitted to address you. I make this
abrupt acknowledgment advisedly, for I feel that
if, when I raise my provincial voice in this ancient
and august presence, it could find courage for no
more than the opening sentence, it would be well
if in that sentence I had met in a rough sense my
obligation as a guest, and had perished, so to
speak, with courtesy on my lips and grace in my
heart.

Permitted, through your kindness, to catch my
second wind, let me say that I appreciate the
significance of being the first Southerner to speak

7

1 ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

at this board, which bears the substance, if it
surpasses the semblance, of original New England
hospitality, and honors the sentiment that in
turn honors you, but in which my personality is
lost, and the compliment to my people made plain.

I bespeak the utmost stretch of your courtesy
to-night. I am not troubled about those from
whom I come. You remember the man whose
wife sent him to a neighbor with a pitcher of
milk, and who, tripping on the top step, fell with
such casual interruptions as the landings afforded
into the basement, and, while picking himself up,
had the pleasure of hearing his wife call out,
« John, did you break the pitcher ? "

" No, I didn't," said John, « but I'll be dinged
if I don't."

So, while those who call me from behind may
inspire me with energy, if not with courage, I
ask an indulgent hearing from you. I beg that
you will bring your full faith in American fair
ness and frankness to judgment upon what I
shall say. There was an old preacher once who
told some boys of the Bible lesson he was going
to read in the morning. The boys, finding the
place, glued together the connecting pages. The
next morning he read on the bottom of one page,
" When Noah was one hundred and twenty years
old he took unto himself a wife, who was " —
then turning the page — "140 cubits long, 40

8

THE NEW SOUTH

cubits wide, built of gopher wood, and covered
with pitch inside and out." He was naturally
puzzled at this. He read it again, verified it, and
then said : " My friends, this is the first time I
ever met this in the Bible, but I accept this as
an evidence of the assertion that we are fearfully
and wonderfully made." If I could get you to
hold such faith to-night, I could proceed cheer
fully to the task I otherwise approach with a
sense of consecration.

Pardon me one word, Mr. President, spoken
for the sole purpose of getting into the volumes
that go out annually freighted with the rich elo
quence of your speakers — the fact that the Cava
lier as well as the Puritan was on the continent
in its early days, and that he was " up and able
to be about." I have read your books carefully,
and I find no mention of this fact, which seems
to me an important one for preserving a sort of
historical equilibrium, if for nothing else.

Let me remind you that the Virginia Cavalier
first challenged France on the continent — that
Cavalier John Smith gave New England its very
name, and was so pleased with the job that he
has been handing his own name around ever since ;
and that while Myles Standish was cutting off
men's ears for courting a girl without her parents'
consent, and forbade men to kiss their wives on
Sunday, the Cavalier was courting everything

9

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

in sight, and that the Almighty had vouchsafed
great increase to the Cavalier colonies, the huts
in the wilderness being as full as the nests in the
woods.

But having incorporated the Cavalier as a fact
in your charming little books, I shall let him
work out his own salvation, as he has always
done, with engaging gallantry, and we will hold
no controversy as to his merits. Why should
we ? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survived
as such. The virtues and good traditions of both
happily still live for the inspiration of their sons
and the saving of the old fashion. But both Pu
ritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of the
first Revolution, and the American citizen, sup
planting both and stronger than either, took
possession of the Republic bought by their com
mon blood and fashioned to wisdom, and charged
himself with teaching men government and es
tablishing the voice of the people as the voice of
God.

My friends, Dr. Talmage has told you that
the typical American has yet to come. Let me
tell you that he has already come. Great types,
like valuable plants, are slow to flower and fruit.
But from the union of these colonists, Puritans
and Cavaliers, from the straightening of their
purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow
perfecting through a century, came he who

10

THE NEW SOUTH

stands as the first typical American, the first who
comprehended within himself all the strength
and gentleness, all the majesty and grace, of this
Republic — Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum
of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature
were fused the virtues of both, and in the depths
of his great soul the faults of both were lost.
He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cava
lier, in that he was American, and that in his
honest form were first gathered the vast and
thrilling forces of his ideal government, charg
ing it with such tremendous meaning and ele
vating it above human suffering, that martyrdom,
though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown
to a life consecrated from the cradle to human
liberty. Let us, each cherishing the traditions
and honoring his fathers, build with reverent
hands to the type of this simple but sublime life,
in which all types are honored, and in our com
mon glory as Americans there will be plenty and
to spare for your forefathers and for mine.

Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a mas
ter's hand, the picture of your returning armies.
He has told you how, in the pomp and circum
stance of war, they came back to you, marching
with proud and victorious tread, reading their
glory in a nation's eyes! Will you bear with
me while I tell you of another army that sought
its home at the close of the late war? — an army

11

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

that marched home in defeat and not in victory,
in pathos and not in splendor, but in glory that
equaled yours, and to hearts as loving as ever
welcomed heroes home ! Let me picture to you
the footsore Confederate soldier, as, buttoning
up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was
to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity
and faith, he turned his face southward from
Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as,
ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by
want and wounds, having fought to exhaustion,
he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his
comrades in silence, and lifting his tear-stained
and pallid face for the last time to the graves
that dot old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap
over his brow and begins the slow and painful
journey.

What does he find — let me ask you who went
to your homes eager to find, in the welcome you
had justly earned, full payment for four years'
sacrifice — what does he find when, having fol
lowed the battle-stained cross against overwhelm
ing odds, dreading death not half so much as
surrender, he reaches the home he left so pros
perous and beautiful? He finds his house in
ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his
stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed,
his money worthless, his social system, feudal in
its magnificence, swept away, his people without

12

THE NEW SOUTH

law or legal status, his comrades slain, and the
burdens of others heavy on his shoulders.
Crushed by defeat, his very traditions are gone;
without money, credit, employment, material, or
training ; and besides all this, confronted with the
gravest problem that ever met human intelli
gence — the establishment of a status for the
vast body of his liberated slaves.

What does he do — this hero in gray with a
heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness
and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who
had stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him
in his adversity. As ruin was never before so
overwhelming, never was restoration swifter.
The soldier stepped from the trenches into the
furrow ; horses that had charged federal guns
marched before the plow, and fields that ran red
with human blood in April were green with the
harvest in June ; women reared in luxury cut
up their dresses and made breeches for their hus
bands, and, with a patience and heroism that fit
women always as a garment, gave their hands
to work. There was little bitterness in all this.
Cheerfulness and frankness prevailed. "Bill
Arp" struck the keynote when he said, "Well,
I killed as many of them as they did of me, and
now I'm going to work." So did the soldier
returning home after defeat and roasting some
corn on the roadside who made the remark to

13

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

his comrades, " You may leave the South if you
want to, but I'm going to Sandersville, kiss my
wife, and raise a crop, and if the Yankees fool
with me any more, I'll whip 'em again."

I want to say to General Sherman, who is
considered an able man in our parts, though
some people think he is a kind of careless man
about fire, that from the ashes he left us in 1864
we have raised a brave and beautiful city; that
somehow or other we have caught the sunshine
in the bricks and mortar of our homes, and have
builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or
! memory.

But what is the sum of our work ? We have
found out that in the summing up the free negro
counts more than he did as a slave. We have
planted the schoolhouse on the hilltop and made
it free to white and black. We have sown
towns and cities in the place of theories, and put
business above politics. We have challenged
your spinners in Massachusetts and your iron-
makers in Pennsylvania. We have learned that
the $400,000,000 annually received from our cot
ton crop will make us rich when the supplies
that make it are home-raised. We have reduced
the commercial rate of interest from 24 to 6 per
cent, and are floating 4 per cent bonds. We
have learned that one Northern immigrant is
worth fifty foreigners, and have smoothed the

14

THE NEW SOUTH

path to Southward, wiped out the place where
Mason and Dixon's line used to be, and hung out
the latchstring to you and yours.

We have reached the point that marks perfect
harmony in every household, when the husband
confesses that the pies which his wife cooks are
as good as those his mother used to bake ; and
we admit that the sun shines as brightly and the
moon as softly as it did before the war. We
have established thrift in city and country. We
have fallen in love with work. We have restored
comfort to homes from which culture and elegance
never departed. We have let economy take root
and spread among us as rank as the crab-grass
which sprung from Sherman's cavalry camps,
until we are ready to lay odds on the Georgia
Yankee as he manufactures relics of the battle
field in a one-story shanty and squeezes pure
olive oil out of his cotton seed, against any down-
easter that ever swapped wooden nutmegs for
flannel sausage in the valleys of Vermont. Above
all, we know that we have achieved in these
" piping times of peace " a fuller independence
for the South than that which our fathers sought
to win in the forum by their eloquence or com
pel in the field by their swords.

It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part,
however humble, in this work. Never was nobler
duty confided to human hands than the uplifting

15

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

and upbuilding of the prostrate and bleeding
South — misguided, perhaps, but beautiful in her
suffering, and honest, brave, and generous always.
In the record of her social, industrial, and polit
ical illustration we await with confidence the
verdict of the world.

But what of the negro? Have we solved the
problem he presents or progressed in honor and
equity toward solution? Let the record speak to
the point. No section shows a more prosperous
laboring population than the negroes of the South,
none in fuller sympathy with the employing and
land-owning class. He shares our school fund,
has the fullest protection of our laws, and the
friendship of our people. Self-interest, as well as
honor, demand that he should have this. Our
future, our very existence, depend upon our work
ing out this problem in full and exact justice.
We understand that when Lincoln signed the
Emancipation Proclamation, your victory was as
sured, for he then committed you to the cause of
human liberty, against which the arms of man
cannot prevail — while those of our statesmen
who trusted to make slavery the corner stone of
the Confederacy doomed us to defeat as far as
they could, committing us to a cause that reason
could not defend or the sword maintain in sight
of advancing civilization.

Had Mr. Toombs said, which he did not say,
16

THE NEW SOUTH

" that he would call the roll of his slaves at the
foot of Bunker Hill," he would have been foolish,
for he might have known that whenever slavery
became entangled in war it must perish, and that
the chattel in human flesh ended forever in New
England when your fathers — not to be blamed
for parting with what didn't pay — sold their
slaves to our fathers — not to be praised for
knowing a paying thing when they saw it. The
relations of the Southern people with the negro
are close and cordial. We remember with what
fidelity for four years he guarded our defenseless
women and children, whose husbands and fathers ,
were fighting against his freedom. To his eternal
credit be it said that whenever he struck a blow
for his own liberty, he fought in open battle, and
when at last he raised his black and humble
hands that the shackles might be struck off, those
hands were innocent of wrong against his help
less charges, and worthy to be taken in loving
grasp by every man who honors loyalty and de
votion. Ruffians have maltreated him, rascals
have misled him, philanthropists established a
bank for him, but the South, with the North,
protests against injustice to this simple and sin
cere people.

To liberty and enfranchisement is as far as
law can carry the negro. The rest must be left
to conscience and common sense. It must be
c 17

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

left to those among whom his lot is cast, with
whom he is indissolubly connected, and whose
prosperity depends upon their possessing his in
telligent sympathy and confidence. Faith has
been kept with him, in spite of calumnious as
sertions to the contrary by those who assume to
speak for us or by frank opponents. Faith will
be kept with him in the future, if the South holds
her reason and integrity.

But have we kept faith with you ? In the
fullest sense, yes. When Lee surrendered — I
don't say when Johnston surrendered, because I
understand he still alludes to the time when he
met General Sherman last as the time when he
determined to abandon any further prosecution
of the struggle — when Lee surrendered, I say,
and Johnston quit, the South became, and has
since been, loyal to this Union. We fought hard
enough to know that we were whipped, and in
perfect frankness accept as final the arbitrament
of the sword to which we had appealed. The
South found her jewel in the toad's head of de
feat. The shackles that had held her in narrow
] imitations fell forever when the shackles of the
negro slave were broken. Under the old regime
the negroes were slaves to the South ; the South
was a slave to the system. The old plantation,
with its simple police regulations and feudal
habit, was the only type possible under slavery.

18

THE NEW SOUTH

Thus was gathered in the hands of a splendid
and chivalric oligarchy the substance that should
have been diffused among the people, as the rich
blood, under certain artificial conditions, is gath
ered at the heart, filling that with affluent rapture,
but leaving the body chill and colorless.

The old South rested everything on slavery
and agriculture, unconscious that these could
neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The
new South presents a perfect democracy, the
oligarchs leading in the popular movement ; a
social system compact and closely knitted, less
splendid on the surface, but stronger at the core ;
a hundred farms for every plantation, fifty homes
for every palace ; and a diversified industry that
meets the complex needs of this complex age.

The new South is enamored of her new work.
Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life.
The light of a grander day is falling fair on
her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness
of growing power and prosperity. As she stands
upright, full-statured and equal among the people
of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking
out upon the expanded horizon, she understands
that her emancipation came because, through the
inscrutable wisdom of God, her honest purpose
was crossed and her brave armies were beaten.

This is said in no spirit of time-serving or
apology. The South has nothing for which to

19

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

apologize. She believes that the late struggle
between the States was war and not rebellion,
revolution and not conspiracy, and that her con
victions were as honest as yours. I should be
unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to
my own convictions if I did not make this plain
in this presence. The South has nothing to take
back.

In my native town of Athens is a monument
that crowns its central hill — a plain, white
shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a name
dear to me above the names of men — that of
a brave and simple man who died in brave and
simple faith. Not for all the glories of New
England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would
I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's
death. To the foot of that shaft I shall send
my children's children to reverence him who en
nobled their name with his heroic blood. But,
sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory
which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I
say that the cause in which he suffered and for
which he gave his life was adjudged by a higher
and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am
glad that the omniscient God held the balance of
battle in His Almighty hand, and that human
slavery was swept forever from American soil —
that the American Union was saved from the
wreck of war.

20

THE NEW SOUTH

This message, Mr. President, comes to you
from consecrated ground. Every foot of soil
about the city in which I live is sacred as a
battle ground of the Republic. Every hill that in
vests it is hallowed to you by the blood of your
brothers who died for your victory, and doubly
hallowed to us by the blood of those who died
hopeless, but undaunted, in defeat — sacred soil
to all of us, rich with memories that make us
purer and stronger and better, silent but stanch
witnesses in its red desolation of the matchless
valor of American hearts and the deathless glory
of American arms, speaking an eloquent witness
in its white peace and prosperity to the indis
soluble union of American States and the im
perishable brotherhood of the American people.

Now, what answer has New England to this
message ? Will she permit the prejudice of war
to remain in the hearts of the conquerors, when
it has died in the hearts of the conquered ? Will I
she transmit this prejudice to the next generation,
that in their hearts, which never felt the generous
ardor of conflict, it may perpetuate itself ? Will
she withhold, save in strained courtesy, the hand
which straight from his soldier's heart Grant
offered to Lee at Appomattox ? Will she make
the vision of a restored and happy people, which
gathered above the couch of your dying captain,
filling his heart with grace, touching his lips

21

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

with praise, and glorifying his path to the grave
— will she make this vision, on which the last
sigh of his expiring soul breathed a benediction,
a cheat and delusion ?

If she does, the South, never abject in asking
for comradeship, must accept with dignity its
refusal; but if she does not refuse to accept in
frankness and sincerity this message of good will
and friendship, then will the prophecy of Web
ster, delivered in this very society forty years
ago amid tremendous applause, be verified in its
fullest sense, when he said : " Standing hand to
hand and clasping hands, we should remain united
as we have been for sixty years, citizens of the
same country, members of the same government,
united, all united now and united forever. There
have been difficulties, contentions, and controver
sies, but I tell you that in my judgment, —

" ' Those opposed eyes,

Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in th' intestine shock,
Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,
March all one way/ "

22

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

An address delivered at the Dallas, Texas, State Fair, October

26, 1887

" WHO saves his country, saves all things, and
all things saved will bless him. Who lets his
country die, lets all things die, and all things
dying curse him." These words are graven on
the statue of Benjamin H. Hill in the city of
Atlanta, and in their spirit I shall speak to you
to-day.

Mr. President and fellow-citizens: I salute
the first city of the grandest State of the greatest
government on this earth. In paying earnest
compliment to this thriving city and this generous
multitude, I need not cumber speech with argu
ment or statistics. It is enough to say that my
friends and myself make obeisance this morning
to the chief metropolis of the State of Texas. If
it but holds this preeminence, — and who can
doubt in this auspicious presence that it will? —
the uprising tide of Texas's prosperity will carry
it to glories unspeakable. For I say in soberness,
the future of this marvelous and amazing empire,
that gives broader and deeper significance to
statehood by accepting its modest naming, the

23

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

mind of man can neither measure nor compre
hend.

I shall be pardoned for resisting the inspiration
of this presence and adhering to-day to blunt
and vigorous speech — for there are times when
fine words are paltry, and this seems to me to
be such a time. So I shall turn away from the
thunders of the political battle upon which every
American hangs intent, and repress the ardor
that at this time rises in every American heart —
for there are issues that strike deeper than any
political theory has reached, and conditions of
which partisanry has taken, and can take, but
little account. Let me, therefore, with studied
plainness, and with such precision as is possible
— in a spirit of fraternity that is broader than
party limitations, and deeper than political
motives — discuss with you certain problems
upon the wise and prompt solution of which de
pends the glory and prosperity of the South.

But why — for let us make our way slowly —
why "the South " ? In an indivisible union — in
a Republic against the integrity of which sword
shall never be drawn or mortal hand uplifted,
and in which the rich blood gathering at the com
mon heart is sent throbbing into every part of the
body politic — why is one section held separated
from the rest in alien consideration ? We can
understand why this should be so in a city that

24

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

has a community of local interests ; or in a State
still clothed in that sovereignty of which the de
bates of peace and the storm of war has not
stripped her. But why should a number of
States, stretching from Richmond to Galveston,
bound together by no local interests, held in no
autonomy, be thus combined and drawn to a
common center ? That man would be absurd who
declaimed in Buffalo against the wrongs of the
Middle States, or who demanded in Chicago a
convention for the West to consider the needs of
that section.

If, then, it be provincialism that holds the
South together, let us outgrow it ; if it be sec
tionalism, let us root it out of our hearts ; but if
it be something deeper than these and essential
to our system, let us declare it with frankness,
consider it with respect, defend it with firmness,
and in dignity abide its consequence. What is it
that holds the Southern States — though true
in thought and deed to the Union — so closely
bound in sympathy to-day ? For a century these
States championed a governmental theory, but
that, having triumphed in every forum, fell at
last by the sword. They maintained an institu
tion, but that, having been administered in the
fullest wisdom of man, fell at last in the higher
wisdom of God. They fought a war, but the
prejudices of that war have died, its sympathies

25

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

have broadened, and its memories are already
the priceless treasure of the Republic that is ce
mented forever with its blood. They looked out
together upon the ashes of their homes and the
desolation of their fields, but out of pitiful re
source they have fashioned their homes anew,
and plenty rides on the springing harvests. In
all the past there is nothing to draw them into
essential or lasting alliance — nothing in all that
heroic record that cannot be rendered unfearing
from provincial hands into the keeping of Ameri
can history.

But the future holds a problem in solving
which the South must stand alone ; in dealing
with which she must come closer together than
ambition or despair have driven her ; and on the
outcome of which her very existence depends.
This problem is to carry within her body politic
two separate races, and nearly equal in numbers.
She must carry these races in peace, for dis
cord means ruin. She must carry them sepa
rately, for assimilation means debasement. She
must carry them in equal justice, for to this
she is pledged in honor and in gratitude. She
must carry them even unto the end, for in human
probability she will never be quit of either.

This burden no other people bears to-day;
on none hath it ever rested. Without precedent
or companionship, the South must bear this prob-

26

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

lem — the awful responsibility of which should
win the sympathy of all human kind, and the
protecting watchfulness of God — alone, even
unto the end. Set by this problem apart from
all other peoples of the earth, and her unique
position emphasized rather than relieved, as I
shall show hereafter, by her material conditions,
it is not only fit, but it is essential that she should
hold her brotherhood unimpaired, quicken her
sympathies, and in the lights or in the shadows
of this surpassing problem work out her own sal
vation in the fear of God — but of God alone.

What shall the South do to be saved ? Through
what paths shall she reach the end? Through
what travail, or what splendors, shall she give
to the Union this section, its wealth garnered,
its resources utilized, and its rehabilitation com
plete, and restore to the world this problem
solved in such justice as the finite mind can
measure, or finite hands administer? In dealing
with this I shall dwell on two points: first, the
duty of the South in its relation to the race
problem; second, the duty of the South in rela
tion to its no less unique and important indus
trial problem.

I approach this discussion with a sense of con
secration. I beg your patient and cordial sym
pathy. And I invoke the Almighty God, that
having showered on this people His fullest riches,

27

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

has put their hands to this task, that He will
draw near unto us, as He drew near to troubled
Israel, and lead us in the ways of honor and up
rightness ; even through a pillar of cloud by day,
and a pillar of fire by night.

What of the negro ? This of him. I want
no better friend than the black boy who was
raised by my side, and who is now trudging pa
tiently with downcast eyes and shambling figure
through his lowly way in life. I want no sweeter
music than the crooning of my old "mammy,"
now dead and gone to rest, as I heard it when
she held me in her loving arms, and bending her
old black face above me stole the cares from my
brain, and led me smiling into sleep. I want
no truer soul than that which moved the trusty
slave, who for four years, while my father fought
with the armies that barred his freedom, slept
every night at my mother's chamber door, hold
ing her and her children as safe as if her hus
band stood guard, and ready to lay down his
humble life on her threshold.

History has no parallel to the faith kept by the
negro in the South during tjie war. Often five
hundred negroes to a single white man, and yet
through these dusky throngs the women and
children walked in safety, and the unprotected
homes rested in peace. Unmarshaled, the black
battalions moved patiently to the fields in the

28

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

morning to feed the armies their idleness would
have starved, and at night gathered anxiously at
the big house to "hear the news from marster,"
though conscious that his victory made their
chains enduring. Every where humble and kindly,
the bodyguard of the helpless, the rough com
panion of the little ones, the observant friend,
the silent sentry in his lowly cabin, the shrewd
counselor, and, when the dead came home, a
mourner at the open grave. A thousand torches
would have disbanded every Southern army, but
not one was lighted. When the master, going to
a war in which slavery was involved, said to his
slave, " I leave my home and loved ones in your
charge," the tenderness between man and master
stood disclosed. And when the slave held that
charge sacred through storm and temptation, he
gave new meaning to faith and loyalty. I rejoice
that when freedom came to him after years of
waiting, it was all the sweeter because the black
hands from which the shackles fell were stain
less of a single crime against the helpless ones
confided to his care.

From this root, embedded in a century of kind
and constant companionship, has sprung some
foliage. As no race had ever lived in such unre
sisting bondage, none was ever hurried with such
swiftness through freedom into power. Into
hands still trembling from the blow that broke

29

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

the shackles, was thrust the ballot. In less than
twelve months from the day he walked down the
furrow a slave, a negro dictated in legislative
halls, from which Davis and Calhoun had gone
forth, the policy of twelve commonwealths.
When his late master protested against his mis
rule, the federal drumbeat rolled around his
strongholds, and from a hedge of federal bayonets
he grinned in good-natured insolence. From the
proven incapacity of that day has he far ad
vanced ? Simple, credulous, impulsive, easily led
and too often easily bought, is he a safer, more
intelligent citizen now than then ? Is this mass
of votes, loosed from old restraints, inviting
alliance or awaiting opportunity, less menacing
than when its purpose was plain and its way
direct ?

My countrymen, right here the South must
make a decision on which very much depends.
Many wise men held that the white vote of the
South should divide, the color line be beaten
down, and the Southern States ranged on eco
nomic or moral questions as interest or belief
demands. I am compelled to dissent from this
view. The worst thing, in my opinion, that
could happen is that the white people of the
South should stand in opposing factions, with
the vast mass of ignorant or purchasable negro
votes between. Consider such a status. If the

30

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

negroes were skillfully led, — and leaders would ]
not be lacking, — it would give them the balance 1
of power, a thing not to be considered. If their 1
vote was not compacted, it would invite the de
bauching bid of factions, and drift surely to that
which was the most corrupt and cunning. With
the shiftless habit and irresolution of slavery
days still possessing him, the negro voter will
not in this generation, adrift from war issues,
become a steadfast partisan through conscience
or conviction. In every community there are
colored men who redeem their race from this re
proach, and who vote under reason. Perhaps in
time the bulk of this race may thus adjust itself.
But, through what long and monstrous periods
of political debauchery this status would be ;
reached, no tongue can tell.

The clear and unmistakable domination of the j
white race, dominating not through violence, not J
through party alliance, but through the integrity'
of its own vote and the largeness of its sympathy;
and justice through which it shall compel the
support of the better classes of the colored race
— that is the hope and assurance of the South.
Otherwise, the negro would be bandied from
one faction to another. His credulity would be
played upon, his cupidity tempted, his impulses
misdirected, his passions inflamed. He would
be forever in alliance with that faction which was

31

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

most desperate and unscrupulous. Such a state
would be worse than reconstruction, for then in
telligence was banded, and its speedy triumph
assured. But with intelligence and property di
vided, bidding and overbidding for place and
patronage, irritation increasing with each con
flict, the bitterness and desperation seizing every
heart, political debauchery deepening as each
faction staked its all in the miserable game —
there would be no end to this, until our suf
frage was hopelessly sullied, our people forever
divided, and our most sacred rights surrendered.
One thing further should be said in perfect
frankness. Up to this point we have dealt with
ignorance and corruption, but beyond this point
a deeper issue confronts us. Ignorance may
struggle to enlightenment ; out of corruption may
come the incorruptible. God speed the day when
— every true man will work and pray for its
coming — the negro must be led to know and,
through sympathy, to confess that his interests
and the interests of the people of the South are
identical. The men who, from afar off, view this
subject through the cold eye of speculation or see
it distorted through partisan glasses, insist that,
directly or indirectly, the negro race shall be in
control of the affairs of the South. We have no
fears of this ; already we are attracting to us the
best elements of the race, and as we proceed our

32

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

alliance will broaden ; external pressure but irri
tates and impedes. Those who would put the
negro race in supremacy would work against in-
fallible decree, for the white race can never sub
mit to its domination, because the white race is
the superior race. But the supremacy of the
white race of the South must be maintained for
ever, and the domination of the negro race re
sisted at all points and at all hazards, because
the white race is the superior race. This is the j
declaration of no new truth. It has abided for
ever in the marrow of our bones, and shall run
forever with the blood that feeds Anglo-Saxon
hearts.

In political compliance the South has evaded
the truth, and men have drifted from their con
victions. But we cannot escape this issue. It
faces us wherever we turn. It is an issue that
has been and will be. The races and tribes of j
earth are of divine origin. Behind the laws of J
man and the decrees of war, stands the law of
God. What God hath separated let no man join
together. The Indian, the Malay, the negro, the
Caucasian, these types stand as markers of God's
will. Let no man tinker with the work of the
Almighty. Unity of civilization, no more than
unity of faith, will never be witnessed on earth.
No race has risen, or will rise, above its ordained
place. Here is the pivotal fact of this great
D 33

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

matter — two races are made equal in law, and
in political rights, between whom the caste of
race has set an impassable gulf. This gulf is
bridged by a statute, and the races are urged to
cross thereon. This cannot be. The fiat of the
Almighty has gone forth, and in eighteen cen
turies of history it is written.

We would escape this issue if we could. From
the depths of its soul the South invokes from
heaven "peace on earth, and good will to man."
She would not, if she could, cast this race back
into the condition from which it was righteously
raised. She would not deny its smallest or
abridge its fullest privilege. Not to lift this bur
den forever from her people would she do the
least of these things. She must walk through
the valley of the shadow, for God has so ordained.
But He has ordained that she shall walk in that
integrity of race that was created in His wisdom
and has been perpetuated in His strength. Stand
ing in the presence of this multitude, sobered with
the responsibility of the message I deliver to the
young men of the South, I declare that the truth
above all others to be worn unsullied and sacred
in your hearts, to be surrendered to no force, sold
for no price, compromised in no necessity, but
cherished and defended as the covenant of your
prosperity, and the pledge of peace to your chil
dren, is that the white race must dominate for-

34

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

ever in the South, because it is the white race,
and superior to that race by which its supremacy
is threatened.

It is a race issue. Let us come to this point,
and stand here. Here the air is pure and the
light is clear, and here honor and peace abide.
Juggling and evasion deceive not a man. Com
promise and subservience have carried not a
point. There is not a white man, North or South,
who does not feel it stir in the gray matter of
his brain and throb in his heart, not a negro who
does not feel its power. It is not a sectional
issue. It speaks in Ohio and in Georgia. It
speaks wherever the Anglo-Saxon touches an
alien race. It has just spoken in universally
approved legislation in excluding the Chinaman
from our gates, not for his ignorance, vice, or
corruption, but because he sought to establish an
inferior race in a Republic fashioned in the wis
dom and defended by the blood of a homogeneous
people.

The Anglo-Saxon blood has dominated always
and everywhere. It fed Alfred when he wrote
the charter of English liberty ; it gathered about
Hampden as he stood beneath the oak ; it thun-
deredMn Cromwell's veins as he fought his king;
it humbled Napoleon at Waterloo ; it has touched
the desert and jungle with undying glory ; it
carried the drumbeat of England around the world

35

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

and spread on every continent the gospel of lib
erty and of God ; it established this Republic,
carved it from the wilderness, conquered it from
the Indians, wrested it from England, and at last,
stilling its own tumult, consecrated it forever as
the home of the Anglo-Saxon and the theater of
his transcending achievement. Never one foot
of it can be surrendered, while that blood lives
in American veins and feeds American hearts, to
the domination of an alien and inferior race.

And yet that is just what is proposed. Not
in twenty years have we seen a day so pregnant
with fate to this section as the 6th of next
November. If President Cleveland is then de
feated, which God forbid, I believe these States
will be led through sorrows compared to which
the woes of reconstruction will be as the fading
dews of morning to the roaring flood. To domi
nate these States through the colored vote, with
such aid as federal patronage may debauch or
federal power determine, and thus through its
chosen instruments perpetuate its rule, is in my
opinion the settled purpose of the Republican
party. I am appalled when I measure the pas
sion in which this negro problem is judged by
the leaders of the party.

Fifteen years ago Vice President Wilson said,
— and I honor his memory as that of a coura
geous man, — " We shall not have finished with

36

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

the South until we force its people to change
their thought and think as we think." I repeat
these words, for I heard them when a boy, and
they fell on my ears as the knell of my people's
rights — "to change their thought, and make
them think as we think." Not enough to have
conquered our armies, to have decimated our
ranks, to have desolated our fields and reduced
us to poverty, to have struck the ballot from our
hands and enfranchised our slaves, to have held
us prostrate under bayonets while the insolent
mocked and thieves plundered; but their very
souls must be rifled of their faiths, their sacred
traditions cudgeled from memory, and their im
mortal minds beaten into subjection until thought
had lost its integrity and we were forced "to
think as they think."

And just now General Sherman has said, and
I honor him as a soldier : " The negro must be
allowed to vote, and his vote must be counted ;
otherwise, so sure as there is a God in heaven,
you will have another war, more cruel than the
last, when the torch and dagger will take the
place of the muskets of well-ordered battalions.
Should the negro strike that blow, in seeming
justice, there will be millions to assist them."

And this General took Johnston's sword in
surrender ! He looked upon the thin and ragged
battalions in gray, that for four years had held

37

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

his teeming and heroic legions at bay. Facing
them, he read their courage in their depleted
ranks and gave them a soldier's parole. When
he found it in his heart to taunt these heroes with
this threat, why — careless as he was twenty
years ago with fire, he is even more careless now
with his words. If we could hope that this prob
lem would be settled within our lives, I would ap
peal from neither madness nor unmanliness. But
when I know that, strive as I may, I must at last
render this awful heritage into the untried hands
of my son, already dearer to me than my life,
and that he must in turn bequeath it unsolved to
his children, I cry out against the inhumanity
that deepens its difficulties with this incendiary
threat and beclouds its real issue with inflaming
passion.

This problem is not only enduring, but it is
widening. The exclusion of the Chinese is the
first step in the revolution that shall save liberty
and law and religion to this land, and in peace
and order, not enforced on the gallows or at the
bayonet's end, but proceeding from the heart of
an harmonious people, shall secure in the enjoy
ment of the rights and the control of this Repub
lic, the homogeneous people that established and
has maintained it.

The next step will be taken when some brave
statesman, looking Demagogy in the face, shall

38

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

move to call to the stranger at our gates, " Who
comes there ? " admitting every man who seeks
a home or honors our institutions and whose
habit and blood will run with the native current ;
but excluding all who seek to plant anarchy
or to establish alien men or measures on our
soil; and will then demand that the standard
of our citizenship be lifted and the right of
acquiring our suffrage be abridged. When that
day comes, and God speed its coming, the position
of the South will be fully understood and every
where approved. Until then, let us — giving
the negro every right, civil and political, meas
ured in that fullness the strong should always
accord the weak, holding him in closer friend
ship and sympathy than he is held by those
who would crucify us for his sake, realizing
that on his prosperity ours depends — let us
resolve that never by external pressure, or in
ternal division, shall he establish domination,
directly or indirectly, over that race that every,
where has maintained its supremacy. Let this
resolution be cast on the lines of equity and jus
tice. Let it be the pledge of honest, safe, and
impartial administration, and we shall command
the support of the colored race itself, more de
pendent than any other on the bounty and pro
tection of government. Let us be wise and
patient, and we shall secure through its acqui-

39

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

escence what otherwise we should win through
conflict and hold in insecurity.

All this is no unkindness to the negro, but
rather that he may be led in equal rights and
in peace to his uttermost good. Not in sec
tionalism, for my heart beats true to the Union,
to the glory of which your life and heart is
pledged. Not in disregard of the world's opin
ion, for to render back this problem in the
world's approval is the sum of my ambition and
the height of human achievement. Not in re
actionary spirit, but rather to make clear that
new and grander way up which the South is
marching to higher destiny, and on which I
would not halt her for all the spoils that have
been gathered unto parties since Catiline con
spired and Caesar fought. Not in passion, my
countrymen, but in reason ; not in narrowness,
but in breadth ; that we may solve this prob
lem in calmness and in truth, and lifting its
shadows, let perpetual sunshine pour down on
two races, walking together in peace and content
ment. Then shall this problem have proved our
blessing, and the race that threatened our ruin
work our salvation as it fills our fields with the
best peasantry the world has ever seen. Then
the South, putting behind her all the achieve
ments of her past — and in war and in peace
they beggar eulogy — may stand upright among

40

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

the nations and challenge the judgment of man
and the approval of God, in having worked out
in their sympathy, and in His guidance, this last
and surpassing miracle of human government.

What of the South's industrial problem ?
When we remember that amazement followed
the payment by 37,000,000 Frenchmen of a
billion dollars indemnity to Germany, that
the 5,000,000 whites of the South rendered to
the torch and sword three billions of property —
that 130,000,000 a year, or $600,000,000 in twenty
years, has been given willingly of our poverty
as pensions for Northern soldiers, the wonder is
that we are here at all.

There is a figure with which history has
dealt lightly, but that, standing pathetic and
heroic in the genesis of our new growth, has
interested me greatly — our soldier farmer of
'65. What chance had he for the future as he
wandered amid his empty barns, his stock, labor,
and implements gone, — gathered up the frag
ments of his wreck, — urging kindly his bor
rowed mule, paying 60 per cent for all that he
bought, and buying all on credit, — his crop
mortgaged before it was planted, his children
in want, his neighborhood in chaos, — working
under new conditions and retrieving every error
by a costly year, plodding all day down the fur
row, hopeless and adrift, save when at night he

41

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

went back to his broken home, where his wife,
cheerful even then, renewed his courage, while
she ministered to him in loving tenderness. Who
would have thought as during those lonely and
terrible days he walked behind the plow, lock
ing the sunshine in the glory of his harvest and
field, — no friend near save nature, that smiled at
his earnest touch, and God, that sent him the
message of good cheer through the passing breeze
and the whispering leaves, — that he would in
twenty years, having carried these burdens un
complaining, make a crop of 1800,000,000 ? Yet
this he has done, and from his bounty the South
has rebuilded her cities and recouped her losses.
While we exult in his splendid achievement, let
us take account of his standing.

Whence this enormous growth ? For ten
years the world has been at peace. The pioneer
has now replaced the soldier. Commerce has
whitened new seas, and the merchant has occu
pied new areas. Steam has made of the earth
a chessboard, on which men play for markets.
Our Western wheat-grower competes in London
with the Russian and the East Indian. The Ohio
wool-grower watches the Australian shepherd,
and the bleat of the now historic sheep of Ver
mont is answered from the steppes of Asia. The
herds that emerge from the dust of your amaz
ing prairies might hear in their pauses the hoof-

42

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

beats of antipodean herds marching to meet
them. Under Holland's dikes, the cheese and
butter makers fight American dairies. The hen
cackles around the world. California challenges
vine-clad France. The dark continent is dis
closed through meshes of light. There is compe
tition everywhere. The husbandman, driven from
his market, balances price against starvation and
undercuts his rival. This conflict often runs
to panic, and profit vanishes. The Iowa farmer
burning his corn for fuel is not an unusual type.
Amid this universal conflict, where stands the
South ? While the producer of everything we
eat or wear, in every land, is fighting through
glutted markets for bare existence, what of the
Southern farmer ? In his industrial as in his
political problem he is set apart — not in doubt,
but in assured independence. Cotton makes him
king. Not the fleeces that Jason sought can
rival the richness of this plant, as it unfurls its
banners in our fields. It is gold from the
instant it puts forth its tiny shoot. The shower
that whispers to it is heard around the world.
The trespass of a worm on its green leaf
means more to England than the advance of
the Russians on her Asiatic outposts. When its
fiber, current in every bank, is marketed, it
renders back to the South $350,000,000 every
year. Its seed will yield $60,000,000 worth of

43

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

oil to the press and $40,000,000 in food for soil
and beast, making the stupendous total of
$450,000,000 annual income from this crop. And
now, under the Tompkins patent, from its stalk
newspaper is to be made at two cents per pound.
Edward Atkinson once said, " If New England
could grow the cotton plant, without lint, it
would make her richest crop ; if she held mo
nopoly of cotton lint and seed, she would control
the commerce of the world."

But is our monopoly, threatened from Egypt,
India, and Brazil, sure and permanent ? Let the
record answer. In '72 the American supply of
cotton was 3,241,000 bales, — foreign supply,
3,036,000. We led our rivals by less than 200,000
bales. This year the American supply is 8,000,-
000 bales — from foreign sources, 2,100,000 ex
pressed in bales of 400 pounds each. In spite
of new areas elsewhere, of fuller experience,
of better transportation, and unlimited money
spent in experiment, the supply of foreign
cotton has decreased since '72 nearly 1,000,000
bales, while that of the South has increased
nearly 5,000,000. Further than this, since 1872
population in Europe has increased 13 per cent,
and cotton consumption in Europe has increased
50 per cent. Still further, since 1880 cotton
consumption in Europe has increased 28 per cent,
wool only 4 per cent, and flax has decreased 11

44

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

per cent. As for new areas, the uttermost mis
sionary woos the heathen with a cotton shirt in
one hand and a Bible in the other, and no sav
age, I believe, has ever been converted to one
without adopting the other. To summarize :
Our American fiber has increased its product
nearly threefold, while it has seen the product
of its rival decrease one third. It has enlarged
its dominion in the old centers of population,
supplanting flax and wool, and it peeps from the
satchel of every business and religious evangelist
that trots the globe. In three years the Amer
ican crop has increased 1,400,000 bales, and yet
there is less cotton in the world to-day than at
any time for twenty years. The dominion of
our king is established ; this princely revenue
assured, not for a year, but for all time. It is
the heritage that God gave us when he arched
our skies, established our mountains, girt us
about with the ocean, tempered the sunshine, and
measured the rain — ours and our children's
forever.

Not alone in cotton, but in iron, does the South
excel. The Hon. Mr. Norton, who honors this
platform with his presence, once said to me, " An
Englishman of the highest character predicted
that the Atlantic will be whitened within our
lives with sails carrying American iron and coal
to England." When he made that prediction, the

45

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

English miners were exhausting the coal in long
tunnels above which the ocean thundered. Hav
ing ores and coal stored in exhaustless quantity,
in such richness and in such adjustment that iron
can be made and manufacturing done cheaper
than elsewhere on this continent, is to now com
mand, and at last control, the world's market for
iron. The South now sells iron, through Pitts-
burg, in New York. She has driven Scotch iron
first from the interior, and finally from American
ports. Within our lives she will cross the Atlan
tic, and fulfill the Englishman's prophecy. In
1880 the South made 212,000 tons of iron. In
1887, 845,000 tons. She is now actually building,
or has finished this year, furnaces that will pro
duce more than her entire product of last year.
Birmingham alone will produce more iron in
1889 than the entire South produced in 1887.

Our coal supply is exhaustless, Texas alone
having 6000 square miles. In marble and gran
ite we have no rivals, as to quantity or qual
ity. In lumber our riches are even vaster. More
than fifty per cent of our entire area is in forests,
making the South the best timbered region in
the world. We have enough merchantable yel
low pine to bring, in money, $2,500,000,000 — a
sum the vastness of which can only be understood
when I say it nearly equals the assessed value of
the entire South, including cities, forests, farms,

46

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

mines, factories, and personal property of every
description whatsoever. Back of this are our
forests of hard woods and measureless swamps
of cypress and gum. Think of it ! In cotton a
monopoly ; in iron and coal establishing a swift
mastery ; in granite and marble developing equal
advantage and resource ; in yellow pine and
hard woods the world's treasury. Surely the
basis of the South's wealth and power is laid by
the hand of the Almighty God, and its pros
perity has been established by divine law which
works in eternal justice and not by taxes levied
on its neighbors through human statutes. Pay
ing tribute for fifty years that under artificial
conditions other sections might reach a prosperity
impossible under natural laws, it has grown apace
— and its growth shall endure if its people are
ruled by two maxims, that reach deeper than
legislative enactment, and the operation of which
cannot be limited by artificial restraint and but
little hastened by artificial stimulus.

First : No one crop will make a people pros
perous. If cotton held its monopoly under con
ditions that made other crops impossible, or under
allurements that made other crops exceptional,
its dominion would be despotism.

Whenever the greed for a money crop unbal
ances the wisdom of husbandry, the money crop
is a curse. When it stimulates the general econ-

47

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

omy of the farm, it is the profit of farming. In
an unprosperous strip of Carolina, when asked
the cause of their poverty, the people say, " To
bacco — for it is our only crop." In Lancaster,
Pa., the richest American county by the census,
when asked the cause of their prosperity, they
say, " Tobacco — for it is the golden crown of
a diversified agriculture." The soil that pro
duces cotton invites the grains and grasses, the
orchard and the vine. Clover, corn, cotton, wheat,
and barley thrive in the same inclosure ; the
peach, the apple, the apricot, and the Siberian
crab in the same orchard. Herds and flocks
graze ten months every year in the meadows
over which winter is but a passing breath, and
in which spring and autumn meet in summer's
heart. Sugar cane and oats, rice and potatoes,
are extremes that come together under our skies.
To raise cotton and send its princely revenues to
the West for supplies and to the East for usury,
would be misfortune if soil and climate forced
such a curse. When both invite independence,
to remain in slavery is a crime. To mortgage
our farms in Boston for money with which to
buy meat and bread from Western cribs and
smokehouses, is folly unspeakable.

I rejoice that Texas is less open to this charge
than others of the cotton States. With her
80,000,000 bushels of grain, and her 16,000,000

48

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

head of stock, she is rapidly learning that
diversified agriculture means prosperity. Indeed,
the South is rapidly learning the same lesson ;
and, learned through years of debt and depend
ence, it will never be forgotten. The best thing
Georgia has done in twenty years was to raise
her oat crop in one season from 2,000,000 to
9,000,000 bushels, without losing a bale of her
cotton. It is more for the South that she has
increased her crop of corn — that best of grains,
of which Samuel J. Tilden said, " It will be the
staple food of the future, and men will be
stronger and better when that day comes " — by
43,000,000 bushels this year, than to have won
a pivotal battle in the late war. In this one
item she keeps at home this year a sum equal
to the entire cotton crop of my State that last
year went to the West.

This is the road to prosperity. It is the way
to manliness and sturdiness of character. When
every farmer in the South shall eat bread from
his own fields and meat from his owrn pastures,
and, disturbed by no creditor and enslaved by
no debt, shall sit among his teeming gardens
and orchards and vineyards and dairies and
barnyards, pitching his crops in his own wisdom
and growing them in independence, making
cotton his clean surplus, and selling it in his
own time and in his chosen market and not at
B 49

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

a master's bidding, — getting his pay in cash and
not in a receipted mortgage that discharges his
debt, but does not restore his freedom, — then
shall be breaking the fullness of our day.

Great is King Cotton ! But to lie at his feet
while the usurer and grain raiser bind us in sub
jection, is to invite the contempt of man and the
reproach of God. But to stand up before him,
and amid the crops and smokehouses wrest from
him the magna charta of our independence, and
to establish in his name an ample and diversified
agriculture, that shall honor him while it en
riches us, — this is to carry us as far in the way
of happiness and independence as the farmer,
working in the fullest wisdom and in the richest
field, can carry any people.

But agriculture alone — no matter how rich
or varied its resources — cannot establish or
maintain a people's prosperity. There is a lesson
in this that Texas may learn with profit. No
commonwealth ever came to greatness by pro
ducing raw material. Less can this be possible
in the future than in the past. The Comstock
lode is the richest spot on earth. And yet the
miners, gasping for breath fifteen hundred feet
below the earth's surface, get bare existence out
of the splendor they dig from the earth. It goes
to carry the commerce and uphold the industry
of distant lands, of which the men who produce

50

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

it get but dim report. Hardly more is the South
profited when, stripping the harvest of her cotton
fields or striking her teeming hills or leveling
her superb forests, she sends her raw material
to augment the wealth and power of distant
communities.

Texas produces a million and a half bales of
cotton, which yield her 160,000,000. That cotton
woven into common goods would add $75,000,000
to Texas's income from this crop, and employ
220,000 operatives, who would spend within
her borders more than 130,000,000 in wages.
Massachusetts manufactures 575,000 bales of cot
ton, for which she pays $31,000,000, and sells
for $72,000,000, adding a value nearly equal to
Texas's gross revenue from cotton, and yet Texas
has a clean advantage for manufacturing this
cotton of one per cent a pound over Massachusetts.

The little village of Grand Rapids began
manufacturing furniture simply because it was
set in a timber district. It is now a great city
and sells $10,000,000 worth of furniture every
year, in making which 12,500 men are employed,
and a population of 40,000 people supported.
The best pine districts of the world are in east
ern Texas. With less competition and wider
markets than Grand Rapids has, will she ship
her forests at prices that barely support the
wood chopper and sawyer, to be returned in the

51

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

making of which great cities are built or main
tained ? When her farmers and herdsmen draw
from her cities 1126,000,000 as the price of her
annual produce, shall this enormous wealth be
scattered through distant shops and factories,
leaving in the hands of Texas no more than the
sustenance, support, and the narrow brokerage
between buyer and seller ? As one-crop farming
cannot support the country, neither can a re
source of commercial exchange support a city.
Texas wants immigrants, — she needs them, —
for if every human being in Texas were placed
at equidistant points through the State, no
Texan could hear the sound of a human voice
in your broad areas.

So how can you best attract immigration ?
By furnishing work for the artisan and mechanic,
if you meet the demand of your population
for cheaper and essential manufactured articles.
One half million workers would be needed for
this, and with their families would double the
population of your State. In these mechanics
and their dependents, farmers would find a
market for not only their staple crops, but for
the truck that they now despise to raise or sell,
but is at last the cream of the farm. Worcester
County, Mass., takes $7,200,000 of our material
and turns out $87,000,000 of products every year,
paying $20,000,000 in wages.

52

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

The most prosperous section of this world
is that known as the Middle States of this
Republic. With agriculture and manufactures
in the balance, and their shops and factories
set amid rich and ample acres, the result is
such deep and diffuse prosperity as no other
section can show. Suppose those States had a
monopoly of cotton and coal so disposed as to
command the world's markets and the treasury
of the world's timber, I suppose the mind is
staggered in contemplating the majesty of the
wealth and power they would attain. What
have they that the South lacks ? — and to her
these things were added, and climate, ampler
acres, and rich soil. It is a curious fact that
three fourths of the population and manufacturing
wealth of this country is comprised in a narrow
strip between Iowa and Massachusetts, compris
ing less than one sixth of our territory, and that
this strip is distant from the source of raw
materials on which its growth is based, of hard
climate and in a large part of sterile soil. Much
of this forced and unnatural development is due
to slavery, which for a century fenced enterprise
and capital out of the South. Mr. Thomas,
who, in the Lehigh Valley, owned a furnace in
1845 that set the pattern for iron-making in
America, had at that time bought mines and
forests where Birmingham now stands. Slavery

53

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

forced him away. He settled in Pennsylvania.
I have wondered what would have happened if
that one man had opened his iron mines in
Alabama and set his furnaces there at that time.
I know what is going to happen since he has
been forced to come to Birmingham and put up
two furnaces nearly forty years after his survey.

Another cause that has prospered New Eng
land and the Middle States while the South lan
guished, is the system of tariff taxes levied on
the unmixed agriculture of these States for the
protection of industries to our neighbors to the
North, a system on which the Hon. Roger Q.
Mills — that lion of the tribe of Judah — has
at last laid his mighty paw and under the indig
nant touch of which it trembles to its center.
That system is to be revised and its duties re
duced, as we all agree it should be, though I
should say in perfect frankness I do not agree
with Mr. Mills in it. Let us hope this will be
done with care and industrious patience. Whether
it stands or falls, the South has entered the in
dustrial list to partake of its bounty if it stands,
and if it falls, to rely on the favor with which
nature has endowed her, and from this immu
table advantage to fill her own markets and then
have a talk with the world at large.

With amazing rapidity she has moved away
from the one-crop idea that was once her curse.

54

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

In 1880 she was esteemed prosperous. Since
that time she added 393,000,000 bushels to her
grain crops, and 182,000,000 head to her live
stock. This has not lost one bale of her cotton
crop, which, on the contrary, has increased nearly
200,000 bales. With equal swiftness has she
moved away from the folly of shipping out her
ore at $2 a ton and buying it back in implements
at from $20 to $100 per ton ; her cotton at 10
cents a pound, and buying it back in cloth at
20 to 80 cents a pound ; her timber at 8 per thou
sand and buying it back in furniture at ten to
twenty times as much. In the past eight years
1250,000,000 have been invested in new shops
and factories in her States ; 225,000 artisans are
now working that eight years ago were idle or
worked elsewhere, and these added $227,000,000
to the value of her raw material — more than
half the value of her cotton. Add to this the
value of her increased grain crops and stock, and
in the past eight years she has grown in her fields
or created in her shops manufactures more than
the value of her cotton crop. The incoming
tide has begun to rise. Every train brings man
ufacturers from the East and West seeking to
establish themselves or their sons near the raw
material and in this growing market. Let the
fullness of the tide roll in.

It will not exhaust our materials, nor shall we
55

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

glut our markets. When the growing demand
of our Southern market, feeding on its own
growth, is met, we shall find new markets for
the South. Under our new condition many in
direct laws of commerce will be straightened.
We buy from Brazil $50,000,000 worth of goods,
and sell her $8,500,000. England buys only $29,-
000,000, and sells her $35,000,000. Of $65,000,-
000 in cotton goods bought by Central and South
America, over $50,000,000 went to England. Of
$331,000,000 sent abroad by the southern half of
our hemisphere, England secures over half, al
though we buy from that section nearly twice as
much as England. Our neighbors to the south
need nearly every article we make; we need
nearly everything they produce. Less than 2500
miles of road must be built to bind by rail the
two American continents. When this is done, and
even before, we shall find exhaustless markets
to the south. Texas shall command, as she
stands in the van of this new movement, its rich
est rewards.

The South, under the rapid diversification of
crops and diversification of industries, is thrilling
with new life. As this new prosperity comes to
us, it will bring no sweeter thought to me, and
to you, my countrymen, I am sure, than that it
adds not only to the comfort and happiness of
our neighbors, but that it makes broader the

56

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

glory, and deeper the majesty, and more enduring
the strength, of the Union which reigns supreme
in our hearts. In this Republic of ours is lodged
the hope of free government on earth. Here God
has rested the ark of his covenant with the sons
of men. Let us — once estranged and thereby
closer bound — let us soar above all provincial
pride and find our deeper inspirations in gather
ing the fullest sheaves into the harvest and stand
ing the stanchest and most devoted of its sons
as it lights the path and makes clear the way
through which all the people of this earth shall
come in God's appointed time.

A few words to the young men of Texas. I
am glad that I can speak to them at all. Men,
especially young men, look back for their inspira
tions to what is best in their traditions. Ther
mopylae cast Spartan sentiment in heroic mold
and sustained Spartan arms for more than a cen
tury. Thermopylae had survivors to tell the story
of its defeat. The Alamo had none. Though
voiceless, it shall speak from its dumb walls. Lib
erty cried out to Texas, as God called from the
clouds unto Moses. Bowie and Fannin, though
dead, still live. Their voices rang above the din
of Goliad and the glory of San Jacinto, and they
marched with the Texas veterans who rejoiced
at the birth of Texas independence. It is the
spirit of the Alamo that moved above the Texas

57

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

soldiers as they charged like demigods through
a thousand battlefields, and it is the spirit of the
Alamo that whispers from their graves held in
every State of the Union, ennobling their dust,
their soil, that was crimsoned with their blood.

In the spirit of this inspiration and in the
thrill of the amazing growth that surrounds you,
my young friends, it will be strange if the young
men of Texas do not carry the lone star into the
heart of the struggle. The South needs her sons
to-day more than when she summoned them to
the forum to maintain her political supremacy,
more than when the bugle called them to the
field to defend issues put to the arbitrament of
the sword. Her old body is instinct with appeal,
calling on us to come and give her fuller inde
pendence than she has ever sought in field or
forum. It is ours to show that as she prospered
with slaves she shall prosper still more with
freemen ; ours to see that from the lists she en
tered in poverty she shall emerge in prosperity ;
ours to carry the transcending traditions of the
old South from which none of us can in honor or
in reverence depart, unstained and unbroken into
the new.

Shall we fail? Shall the blood of the old
South — the best strain that ever uplifted human
endeavor — that ran like water at duty's call
and never stained where it touched — shall this

58

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

blood that pours into our veins through a cen
tury luminous with achievement, for the first
time falter and be driven back from irresolute
heart, when the old South, that left us a better
heritage in manliness and courage than in broad
and rich acres, calls us to settle problems ?

A soldier lay wounded on a hard-fought field;
the roar of the battle had died away, and he
rested in the deadly stillness of its aftermath.
Not a sound was heard as he lay there, sorely
smitten and speechless, but the shriek of wounded
and the sigh of the dying soul, as it escaped from
the tumult of earth into the unspeakable peace
of the stars. Off over the field flickered the
lanterns of the surgeons with the litter bearers,
searching that they might take away those whose
lives could be saved and leave in sorrow those
who were doomed to die with pleading eyes
through the darkness. This poor soldier watched,
unable to turn or speak as the lantern drew near.
At last the light flashed in his face, and the sur
geon, with kindly face, bent over him, hesitated
a moment, shook his head, and was gone, leaving
the poor fellow alone with death. He watched
in patient agony as they went from one part of
the field to another.

As they came back, the surgeon bent over him
again : " I believe if this poor fellow lives to
sundown to-morrow, he will get well," and

59

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

again leaving him, not to death but with hope ;
all night long these words fell into his heart as
the dew fell from the stars upon his lips, " If
he but lives till sundown, he will get well."

He turned his weary head to the east and
watched for the coming sun. At last the stars
went out, the east trembled with radiance, and
the sun, slowly lifting above the horizon, tinged
his pallid face with flame. He watched it inch
by inch as it climbed slowly up the heavens.
He thought of life, its hopes and ambitions, its
sweetness and its raptures, and he fortified his
soul against despair until the sun had reached
high noon. It sloped down its slow descent,
and his life was ebbing away and his heart was
faltering, and he needed stronger stimulants to
make him stand the struggle until the end of the
day had come. He thought of his far-off home,
the blessed house resting in tranquil peace with
the roses climbing to its door, and the trees
whispering to its windows and dozing in the
sunshine, the orchard and the little brook running
like a silver thread through the forest.

" If I live till sundown, I will see it again. I
will walk down the shady lane ; I will open the
battered gate, and the mocking bird shall call to
me from the orchard, and I will drink again at
the old mossy spring."

And he thought of the wife who had come
60

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

from the neighboring farmhouse and put her
hands shyly in his, and brought sweetness to his
life and light to his home.

" If I live till sundown, I shall look once more
into her deep and loving eyes and press her
brown head once more to my aching breast."

And he thought of the old father, patient in
prayer, bending lower and lower every day
under his load of sorrow and old age.

" If I but live till sundown, I shall see him
again and wind my strong arm about his feeble
body, and his hands shall rest upon my head
while the unspeakable healing of his blessing falls
into my heart."

And he thought of the little children that
clambered on his knees and tangled their little
hands into his heartstrings, making to him such
music as the world shall not equal or heaven
surpass.

" If I live till sundown, they shall again find my
parched lips with their warm mouths, and their
little fingers shall run once more over my face."

And he then thought of his old mother, who
gathered these children about her and breathed
her old heart afresh in their brightness and at
tuned her old lips anew to their prattle, that she
might live till her big boy came home.

" If I live till sundown, I will see her again,
and I will rest my head at my old place on her

61

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

knees, and weep away all memory of this deso
late night." And the Son of God, who died for
men, bending from the stars, put the hand that
had been nailed to the cross on the ebbing life
and held on the stanch until the sun went down
and the stars came out and shone down in the
brave man's heart and blurred in his glistening
eyes, and the lanterns of the surgeons came and
he was taken from death to life.

The world is a battlefield strewn with the
wrecks of government and institutions, of theo
ries and of faiths, that have gone down in the
ravage of years. On this field lies the South,
sown with her problems. Upon this field swing
the lanterns of God. Amid the carnage walks
the Great Physician. Over the South he bends.
" If ye but live until to-morrow's sundown, ye
shall endure, my countrymen." Let us, for her
sake, turn our faces to the east and watch as the
soldier watched for the coming sun. Let us
stanch her wounds and hold steadfast. The
sun mounts the skies. As it descends, let us
minister to her and stand constant at her side
for the sake of our children and of generations
unborn that shall suffer if she fails. And when
the sun has gone down and the day of her proba
tion has ended and the stars have rallied her heart,
the lanterns shall be swung over the field and
the Great Physician shall lead her up from trouble

62

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS

•

into content, from suffering into peace, from
death to life.

Let every man here pledge himself in this high
and ardent hour, as I pledge myself and the boy
that shall follow me ; every man himself and his
son, hand to hand and heart to heart, that in death
and earnest loyalty, in patient painstaking and
care, he shall watch her interest, advance her for
tune, defend her fame, and guard her honor as
long as life shall last. Every man in the sound of
my voice, under the deeper consecration he offers
to the Union, will consecrate himself to the South.
Have no ambition but to be first at her feet and
last at her service, — no hope but, after a long
life of devotion, to sink to sleep in her bosom,
as a little child sleeps at his mother's breast and
rests untroubled in the light of her smile.

With such consecrated service, what could we
not accomplish ; what riches we should gather
for her; what glory and prosperity we should
render to the Union ; what blessings we should
gather unto the universal harvest of humanity!
As I think of it, a vision of surpassing beauty
unfolds to my eyes. I see a South, a home of
fifty millions of people, who rise up every day
to call her blessed ; her cities vast hives of in
dustry and of thrift ; her countrysides the treas
ures from which their resources are drawn ; her
streams vocal with whirring spindles ; her val-

63

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

leys tranquil in the white and gold of the har
vest ; her mountains showering down the music
of bells, as her slow-moving flocks and herds go
forth from their folds ; her rulers honest and her
people loving, and her homes happy and their
hearthstones bright, and their waters still, and
their pastures green, and her conscience clear;
her wealth diffused and poorhouses empty, her
churches earnest and all creeds lost in the gospel.
Peace and sobriety walking hand in hand through
her borders ; honor in her homes ; uprightness in
her midst ; plenty in her fields ; straight and
simple faith in the hearts of her sons and daugh
ters ; her two races walking together in peace
and contentment ; sunshine everywhere and all
the time, and night falling on her gently as from
the wings of the unseen dove.

All this, my country, and more can we do for
you. As I look the vision grows, the splendor
deepens, the horizon falls back, the skies open
their everlasting gates, and the glory of the Al
mighty God streams through as He looks down
on His people who have given themselves unto
Him, and leads them from one triumph to an
other until they have reached a glory unspeak
able, and the whirling stars, as in their courses
through Arcturus they run to the milky way,
shall not look down on a better people or a hap
pier land.

64

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

On Thanksgiving Day, 1887, at the Augusta Exposition,
Mr. Grady delivered the following address.

" When my eyes for the last time behold the sun in the
heavens, may they rest upon the glorious ensign of this
Republic, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies
streaming in original luster, not a star obscured or a stripe
effaced, but everywhere blazing in characters of living
light all over its ample folds as they wave over land and
sea, and in every wind under heaven, that sentiment dear
to every American heart, — Liberty and union now and
forever, one and inseparable ! "

These words of Daniel Webster, whose brain
was the temple of wisdom and whose soul the
temple of liberty, inspire my heart as I speak to
you to-day.

Ladies and gentlemen : This day is auspicious.
Set apart by governor and president for univer
sal thanksgiving, our grateful hearts confirm the
consecration. Though we have not been per
mitted to parade our democratic roosters in jubi
lant print, we may now lead them from their
innocuous desuetude, and making them the basis
of this day's feast, gather about them a company
that in cordial grace shall be excelled by none —
not even that which invests the republican turkey,
p 65

ORATIONS AND^ SPEECHES

whose steaming thighs shall be slipped to-day in
Indianapolis, and attacking them with an appe
tite that comes from abounding health, consign
them to that digestion that waits on a conscience
void of offense.

We give thanks to-day that the Lord God Al
mighty, having led us from desolation into plenty,
from poverty into substance, from passion into
reason, and from estrangement into love — hav
ing brought the harvests from the ashes, and
raised us homes from our ruins, and touched our
scarred land all over with beauty and with peace
— permits us to assemble here to-day and rejoice
amid the garnered heaps of our treasure. Your
visitors give thanks because, coming to a city
that from deep disaster has risen with energy
and courage unequaled, and witnessing an expo
sition that in the sweep of its mighty arms and
the splendor of its gathered riches surpasses all
we have attempted, they find all sense of rivalry
blotted out in wondering admiration, and from
hearts that know not envy or criticism, bid you
Godspeed to even higher achievement, and to
full and swift harvesting of the prosperity to
gain which you have builded so bravely and so
wisely.

I am thankful, if you will pardon this personal
digression, because I now meet face to face, and
can render service to a people whose generous

66

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

words on a late occasion touched my heart more
deeply than I shall attempt here to express. I
simply say to you now, and I would that my
voice could reach every man in Georgia to whom
I am in like indebted, that your kindness left no
room for resentment or regret ; but a heart filled
with gratitude and love steadier in its resolution
to deserve the approval you so unstintingly gave,
and more deeply consecrated to the service of
the people, that in giving me their love have
given all that I have dared to hope for, and more
than I had dared to ask. I know not what the
future may hold for the life that recent events
have jostled from its accustomed path. It would
be affectation to say that I am careless — for,
in touching it with your loving confidence, you
have kindled inspirations that, cherished without
guile, may be confessed in frankness. But if it
be given to man to read the human heart, and
plumb the quicksands of human ambition, I know
that I speak the truth when I say that if ever I
hold in my grasp any honor, in the winning or
wearing of which my State is disadvantaged, and
my hand refuses to surrender it, I pray God that
in remembrance of this hour He will strike it
from me forever ; and if my ambitious heart re
bels, that He will lead it, even through sorrow
and humiliation, to know that unworthy laurels
will fade on the brow, and that no honor can en-

67

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

noble, no triumph advance, and no victory satisfy
that is not won and worn in the weal of the
people and the prosperity of the State.

It gives us pleasure to meet to-day our neigh
bors from Carolina, and by the banks of this
river, more bond than boundary, give them cor
dial welcome to Georgia. The people of these
States, sir, are ancient and honorable friends.
When the infant colony that settled Georgia
landed from its long voyage it was the hands of
Carolinians that helped them ashore, and Caroli
na's hospitality that gave them food and shelter.
A banquet was served at Beaufort, the details of
which proved our ancestors to have been doughty
trencher-men, and at which we are not surprised
to learn a goodly quantity of most excellent wine
was served, nor to learn — for scribes extenuated
then as now — that, though the affair was con
ducted in the most agreeable manner, no one be
came intoxicated. When the Georgians took up
their march to Savannah, they carried with them
herds from the Carolinians' folds, and food from
their granaries, and an offer from Mr. Whitaker
— blessed be his memory! — of a silver spoon
for the first male child born on Georgia soil ; the
first instance, I believe, of a bounty offered or
protection guaranteed to an infant industry on
this continent. When they settled, it was Caro
lina gentlemen with their servants that builded

68

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

the huts and sheltered them, and Carolina cap
tains with their picket men that guarded them
from the Indians. As from your slender and
pitiful store you gave them bountifully to us,
we invite you to-day to share with us our plenty
and rejoice with us that what you planted in
neighborly kindness hath grown into such great
ness.

I am stirred with the profoundest emotion
when I reflect upon what the peoples of these two
States have endured together. Shoulder to shoul
der they have fought through two revolutions.
Side by side they have fallen on the field of battle,
and, brothers even in death, have rested in com
mon graves. Hand clasped in hand, they enjoyed
victory together, and together reaped in honor
and dignity the fruits of their triumph. Heart
locked in heart, they have stood undaunted in
the desolation of defeat and, fortified by unfail
ing comradeship, have wrought gladness and
peace from the tumult and bitterness of despair.
Of them it may be truly said, they have known
no rivalry save that emulation which inspires
each, and embitters neither. If we match your
Calhoun, one of that trinity that hath most been
and shall not be equaled in political record, with
our Stephens, who was as acute in expounding,
and as devoted in defending the Constitution as
he ; your Hayne, who maintained himself val-

69

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

iantly against the great mastodon in American
politics, with our Hill (would that he might be
given back to us to-day), who took the ablest
debater of the age by the throat and shook him
until his eager tongue was stilled and the lips
that had slandered the South were livid in shame
and confusion ; if against McDuffie, eloquent and
immortal tribune, we put our Toombs, the Mira-
beau of his day, surpassing the Frenchman in
eloquence, and stainless of his crimes ; if against
Legare, both scholar and statesman, we put our
Wilde, not surpassed as either; if we proffer
Lanier, Barick, and Harris, when the praises of
Sims, and Hayne, and Timrod are sung, it is only
because we rejoice in the strength of each which
has honored both, and glorified our great Republic.
Let the glory of our past history incite us to the
future ; let the trials we have endured nerve us
for trials yet to come ; and let Georgia and Caro
lina, that in prosperity united, in adversity have
not been divided, strike hands here to-day in a
new compact that shall hold them bound together
in comradeship and love as long as the Savannah,
laying its lips on the cheeks of either, runs down
to the sea.

The South is now confronted by two dangers :
first, that by remaining solid it will force a per
manent sectional alignment, under which, being
in minority, it has nothing to gain and every-

70

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

thing to lose; second, that by dividing it will
debauch its political system, destroy the de
fenses of its social integrity, and put the balance
of power in the hands of an ignorant and dan
gerous class. Let us discuss these dangers for a
moment.

As to the first. I do not doubt that every
day the South remains solid, the drift towards
a solid North is deepening. The South is solid
now in a sense not dreamed of in antebellum
days. Then we divided on every question save
one, that of preserving equal representation in
the Senate. Clay championed the protective
tariff. Jackson flew at Calhoun's throat when
Carolina threatened to nullify. Polk, of Ten
nessee, was made President over Clay of Ken
tucky. In 1852 Pierce received the vote of
twenty-seven States out of thirty-one, though
this period marked the height of slavery disturb
ance. The South was solid then on one thing
alone. On all other questions national suffrage
knew no sectional lines. To-day the South is a
mass of States merged into one; every issue
fused in the ardor of one great question, and our
153 electoral votes hurled as a rifle ball into the
electoral college. The tendency of this must be
to solidify the North. Indeed, this is already
being done. Seymour and Blair, in 1868, on a
platform declaring the amendments null and

71

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

void, were beaten in the North by Grant, the
hero of the war, by less than 100,000 votes. Mr.
Harrison, twenty years later, beat Cleveland
with a flawless record and a careful platform,
over 450,000 votes in the Northern States. The
solid South invites the solid North. From this
status the South has little to hope. The North
is already in the majority. More than five
million immigrants have poured into her States
in the past ten years, and will be declared in the
next census. Four new States will give her
eight new senators and twelve electoral votes.
In the South but one State has kept pace with
the West, — and that one, Texas, has largely
gained at the expense of the Atlantic States.
The South had 38 per cent of the electoral
vote in 1880. It is doubtful if she will have
over 25 per cent in 1890. To remain solid,
therefore, is to incur the danger of being placed
in perpetual minority, and practically shut out
from participation in the government, into
which Georgia and Massachusetts came as
equals — that was fashioned in their common
wisdom, defended in their common blood,
and bought of their common treasure.

But what of the other danger? Can we risk
that to avoid the first ? I am not sure we can
not. The very worst thing that could happen to
the South is to have her white vote divided into

72

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

factions, and each faction bidding for the negro
who holds the balance of power. What is this
negro vote ? In every Southern State it is consid
erable, and I fear it is increasing. It is alien,
being separated by radical differences that are
deep and permanent. It is ignorant — easily de
luded or betrayed. It is impulsive — lashed by
a word into violence. It is purchasable, having
the incentive of poverty and cupidity, and the
restraint of neither pride nor conviction. It can
never be merged through logical or orderly cur
rents into either of two parties, if two should
present themselves. We cannot be rid of it.
There it is, a vast mass of impulsive, ignorant,
and purchasable votes. With no factions be
tween which to swing it has no play or disloca
tion ; but thrown from one faction to another it
is the loosed cannon on the storm-tossed ship.
There is no community that would deliberately
tempt this danger; no social or political fabric
that could stand its strain. The Tweed ring,
backed by a similar and less irresponsible follow
ing than a shrewd clique could rally and control
in every Southern State, and daring less of plun
der and insolence than that following would
sanction or support, blotted out party lines in
New York, and made its intelligence and in
tegrity as solid as the South ever was. Party
lines were promptly recast because New York

73

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

had to deal with the vicious, who, once punished,
may be trusted to sulk in quiet while their
wounds heal. We deal with the ignorant that,
scourged from power to-day, may be deluded to
morrow into assaulting the very position from
which they have been lashed. Never did robbers
find followers more to their mind than the eman
cipated slaves of reconstruction days. Ignorant
and confiding, they could be committed to any
excess, led to any outrage. Deep as was the
degradation to which these sovereign States were
carried, and heavy as is the burden they left on
this impoverished people, it was only when the
white race, rallying from the graves of its dead
and the ashes of its homes, closed its decimated
ranks, and fronting federal bayonets and defying
federal power, stood like a stone wall before the
uttermost temples of its liberty and credit, and
the hideous drama closed, that the miserable
assault was checked.

Shall those ranks be broken while the danger
still threatens ? Let the whites divide, what
happens ? Here is this dangerous and alien in
fluence that holds the balance of power. It can
not be won by argument, for it is without
information, understanding, or traditions — hence
without convictions. It must be bought by race
privileges granted as such, or by money paid out
right. Let us follow this in its twofold aspect.

74

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

One faction gives the negro certain privileges
and wins. The other offers more. The first
bids under, and so the sickening work goes on
until the barriers that now protect the social in
tegrity and peace of both races are swept away.
The negro gains nothing, for he secures these
spoils and privileges not by deserving them, or
qualifying himself for them, but as the plunder
of an irritating struggle in which he loses that
largeness of sympathy and tolerance that is at last
essential to his well-being and advancement. The
other aspect is as bad. One side puts up five
thousand dollars for the purchase of the negro
vote and wins. The other, declining at first to
corrupt the suffrage, but realizing at last that the
administration on which his life and property
depends is at stake, doubles this, and so the
debauching deepens until at last such enormous
sums are spent that they must be recouped from
the public treasuries. Good men, disgusted, go to
the rear. The shrewd and unscrupulous are put
to the front, and the negro, carrying with him the
balance of power, falls at last into the grasp of
the faction which is most cunning and conscience
less. National parties, finding here their cheap
est market and widest field, will pour millions
into the South, adding to the corruption funds of
municipal and State factions until the ballot box
will be hopelessly debauched, all the approaches

75

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

thereto corrupt, and all the results therefrom
tainted.

I understand perfectly that this is not the larg
est view of this question to take. The larger in
terests of this section and of the Union do not
rest here. I deplore this fact. I would that the
South, fettered by no circumstances and embar
rassed by no problem, could take her place by
the side of her sister States, making alliance as
her interest or patriotism suggested.

Let me say here that I yield to no man in my
love for this Union. I was taught from my
cradle to love it, and my father, loving it to the
last, nevertheless gave his life for Georgia when
she asked it at his hands. Loving the Union as
he did, yet would I do unto Georgia even as he
did. I said once in New York, and I repeat it
here, honoring his memory as I do nothing on
this earth, I still thank God that the American
conflict was adjudged by a higher wisdom than
his or mine, that the honest purposes of the
South were crossed, her brave armies beaten, and
the American Union saved from the storm of
war. I love this Union because I am an Ameri
can citizen. I love it because it stands in the
light while other nations are groping in the dark.
I love it because here, in this Republic of a homo
geneous people, must be worked out the great
problems that perplex the world and established

76

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

the axioms that must uplift and regenerate
humanity. I love it because it is my country,
and my State stood by when its flag was once
unfurled, and uplifted her stainless sword, and
pledged " her life, her property, and her sacred
honor," and when the last star glittered from the
silken folds, and with her precious blood wrote
her loyalty in its crimson bars. I love it because
I know that its flag, fluttering from the misty
heights of the future, followed by a devoted
people once estranged and thereby closer bound,
shall blaze out the way, and make clear the
path up which all the nations of the earth shall
come in God's appointed time.

I know the ideal status is that every State
should vote without regard to sectional lines.
The reconciliation of the people will never be
complete until Iowa and Georgia, Texas and
Massachusetts, may stand side by side without
surprise. I would to God that status could be
reached ! If any man can define a path on which
the whites of the South, though divided, can
walk in honor and peace, I shall take that path,
though I walk down it alone — for at the end of
that path, and nowhere else, lies the full eman
cipation of my section and the full restoration
of this Union.

But it cannot be. When the negro was enfran
chised, the South was condemned to solidity as

7T

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

surely as self-preservation is the first law of na
ture. A State here or there may drift away, but
it will come back assuredly — and come through
such travail, and bearing such burden, as neither
war nor pestilence can bring. This problem is
not of our seeking. It was thrust upon us not
in the orderly unfolding of a preordained plan,
but in hot impulse and passion, against the judg
ment of the world and the lessons of history, and
to the peril of popular government, which rests
at last on a pure and unsullied suffrage as a build
ing rests on its corner stone. If it be urged that
it was the inexorable result of our course in 1860,
we reply that we took that course in deliberation,
maintained it in sincerity, sealed it with the
blood of our best and bravest — and we accept
without complaint, and abide in dignity, its di
rect and ultimate results, and shall hold it to be,
in spite of defeat, forever honorable and sacred.
This much I add. No king that ever sat on a
throne, though backed by autocratic power, would
have dared to subject his kingdom to the strain,
and his people to the burden that the North put
on the prostrate, impoverished, and helpless South
when it enfranchised the body of our late slaves.
We would not undo this if we could. We know
that this step, though taken in haste, shall never
be retraced. Posterity will judge of the wis
dom and patriotism in which it was ordered,

78

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

and the order and equity in which it was worked
out.

To that judgment we appeal with confidence.
From that judgment Mr. Elaine has already ap
pealed by shrewdly urging in his written history,
that the North did not intend to enfranchise the
negro, but was forced to do it by the stubborn
attitude of the South. Be that as it may, it is
our problem now, and with resolute hands and
unfailing hearts we must carry it to the end. It
dominates, and will dominate, all other issues
with us. Political spoils are not to be considered.
The administration of our affairs is secondary,
and patronage is less. Economic issues are as
naught, and even great moral reforms must wait
on the settlement of this question. To quarrel
over other issues while this is impending is to
imitate the mother quail that thrums the leaves
afar from her nest, or recall the finesse of the
Spartan boy who smiled in his mother's face
while he hid the fox that was gnawing at his
vitals.

What, then, is the duty of the South ? Simply
this : to maintain the political as well as the
social integrity of her white race, and to appeal
to the world for patience and justice. Let us
show that it is not sectional prejudice, but a sec
tional problem, that keeps us compacted ; that it
is not the hope of dominion or power, but an

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

abiding necessity — not spoils or patronage, but
plain self-preservation, that holds the white race
together in the South. Let us make this so plain
that a community anywhere, searching its own
heart, would say, " The necessity that binds our
brothers in the South would bind us as closely
were the necessity here." Let us invite immi
grants and meet them with such cordial welcome
that they will abide with us in brotherhood, and
so enlarge the body of intelligence and integrity,
that, divided, it may carry the burden of ignorance
without danger. Let us be loyal to the Union,
and not only loyal, but loving. Let the Republic
know that in peace it hath nowhere better citi
zens, nor in war braver soldiers, than in these
States. Though set apart by this problem which
God permits to rest upon us, and which therefore
is right, let us garner our sheaves gladly into the
harvest of the Union, and find joy in our work
and progress, because it makes broader the glory
and deeper the majesty of this Republic that is
cemented with our blood. Let us love the flag
that waved over Marion and Jasper, that waves
over us, and which when we are gathered to our
fathers shall be a guarantee of liberty and pros
perity to our children, and our children's children,
and know that what we do in honor shall deepen,
and what we do in dishonor shall dim, the luster
of its fixed and glittering stars.

80

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

As for the negro, let us impress upon him what
he already knows, that his best friends are the
people among whom he lives, whose interests are
one with his, and whose prosperity depends on
his perfect contentment. Let us give him his
uttermost rights, and measure out justice to him
in that fullness the strong should always give
to the weak. Let us educate him that he may
be a better, a broader, and more enlightened man.
Let us lead him in steadfast ways of citizenship,
that he may not longer be the sport of the thought
less, and the prey of the unscrupulous. Let us
inspire him to follow the example of the worthy
and upright of his race, who may be found in
every community, and who increase steadily in
numbers and influence. Let us strike hands with
him as friends — and as in slavery we led him
to heights which his race in Africa had never
reached, so in freedom let us lead him to a pros
perity of which his friends in the North have not
dreamed. Let us make him know that he, de
pending more than any other on the protection
and bounty of government, shall find in alliance
with the best elements of the whites the pledge
of safe and impartial administration. And let
us remember this — that whatever wrong we put
on him shall return to punish us. Whatever we
take from him in violence, that is unworthy and
shall not endure. What we steal from him in

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

fraud, that is worse. But what we win from
him in sympathy and affection, what we gain in
his confiding alliance and confirm in his awaken
ing judgment, that is precious and shall endure
— and out of it shall come healing and peace.

What is the attitude of the North on this issue?
Two propositions appear to be universally de
clared by the Republicans. First, that the negro
vote of the South is suppressed by violence, or
miscounted by fraud. Second, that it shall be
freely cast and fairly counted. While Republi
cans agree on these declarations, there are those
who hold them sincerely, but would be glad to
see the first disapproved, and the second thereby
wiped out — and those who hold them in malig
nity, and who will maintain the first that they
may justify the storm that lies hid in the second.

Let us send to-day a few words to the fair-
minded Republicans of the North. Here is a fun
damental assertion — the negroes of the South
can never be kept in antagonism with their white
neighbors, for the intimacy and friendliness of
the relation forbids. This friendliness, the most
important factor of the problem, — the saving
factor now as always, — the North has never, and
it appears will never, take account of. It ex
plains that otherwise inexplicable thing — the
fidelity and loyalty of the negro during the war
to the women and children left in his care. Had

82

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

Uncle Tom's Cabin portrayed the habit rather
than the exception of slavery, the return of the
Confederate armies could not have stayed the hor
rors of arson and murder their departure would
have invited. Instead of that, witness the mir
acle of the slave in loyalty closing the fetters
about his own limbs — maintaining the families
of those who fought against his freedom — and
at night on the far-off battlefield searching among
the carnage for his young master, that he might
lift the dying head to his humble breast and with
rough hands wipe the blood away, and bend his
tender ear to catch the last words for the old ones
at home, wrestling meanwhile in agony and love,
that in vicarious sacrifice he would have laid
down his life in his master's stead. This friend
liness, thank God, has survived the lapse of years,
the interruption of factions, and the violence of
campaigns, in which the bayonet fortified, and
the drumbeat inspired. Though unsuspected in
slavery, it explains the miracle of '64 — though
not yet confessed, it must explain the miracle of
1888.

Can a Northern man dealing with casual serv
ants, querulous, sensitive, and lodged for a day
in a sphere they resent, understand the close re
lations of the races of the South? Can he com
prehend the open-hearted, sympathetic negro,
contented in his place, full of gossip and comrade-

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

ship, the companion of the hunt, the frolic, the
furrow, and the home, standing in kindly depend
ence that is the habit of his blood, and lifting
not his eyes beyond the narrow horizon that shuts
him in with his neighbors? This relation may
be interrupted, but permanent estrangement can
never come between these two races. It is upon
this that the South depends. By fair dealing and
by sympathy to deepen this friendship and add
thereto the moral effect of the better elements
compacted, with the wealth and intelligence and
influence lodged therein — it is this upon which
the South has relied for years, and upon which
she will rest in future.

Against this no outside power can prevail.
That there has been violence is admitted. There
has also been brutality in the North. But I do
not believe there was a negro voter in the South
kept away from the polls by fear of violence in
the late election. I believe there were fewer
votes miscounted in the South than in the North.
Even in those localities where violence once oc
curred, wiser counsels have prevailed, and reliance
is placed on those higher and legitimate and in
exorable methods by which the superior race
always dominates, and by which intelligence and
integrity always resist the domination of igno
rance and corruption. If the honest Republicans
of the North permit a scheme of federal supervi-

84

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

sion, based on the assumption of intimidated vot
ers and a false count, they will blunder from
the start, for, beginning in error, they will end
in worse. This whole matter should be left now
with the people with whom it must be left at
last — that people most interested in its honor
able settlement. External pressure but irritates
and delays. The South has voluntarily laid
down the certainty of power which dividing her
States would bring, that she might solve this
problem in the deliberation and the calmness it
demands. She turns away from spoils, knowing
that to struggle for them would bring irritation
to endanger greater things. She postpones re
forms and surrenders economic convictions, that
unembarrassed she may deal with this great issue.
And she pledges her sacred honor — by all that
she has won, and all that she has suffered — that
she will settle this problem in such full and exact
justice as the finite mind can measure, or finite
hands administer. On this pledge she asks the
patience and waiting judgment of the world, and
especially of the people — her brother^ and her
kindred — that in passion forced this problem
into the keeping of her helpless hands.

Shall she have it ? Let us see. Was there a
pistol shot through the South on election day ?
Was there a riot ? Was there anything to equal
the disturbance and arrests in President Harri-

85

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

son's own city ? If so, diligent search has not
found it. Where, then, was the vote suppressed
through violence? In the 12,000 election pre
cincts of the South, where was a ballot box rifled,
or a registry list altered ? Thirteen Republican
congressmen were elected, many of them by
majorities so slender that the vote of a single
precinct would have changed the result. In
West Virginia, with its wild and lawless dis
tricts, the governorship hangs on less than 300
votes, and this very day the governor of Tennes
see and his cabinet are passing on a legal ques
tion in the casting of twenty-three votes that
elects or defeats a congressman. In West Vir
ginia and in Tennessee the law will be applied
as impartially and the official vote held as sacred
as in New York or Ohio. Where, then, is the
wholesale fraud of which complaint is made ?

In the face of this showing, let me quote from
an editorial in the Chicago Tribune, one of the
most powerful and a usually conservative journal,
charging that the negro vote is suppressed and
miscounted. It says : —

"The trouble is, the blacks will not fight for themselves.
White men, or Indians, situated as the negroes, would
have made the rivers of the South run red with blood be
fore they would submit to the usurpations and wrongs
with which the blacks passively endure. Oppressed by
generations of slavery, the negroes are noncombatants.
They will not shoot and burn for their rights."

86

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

Mark the unspeakable infamy of this sugges
tion. The "trouble" is that the negroes will
not rise and shoot and burn. Not the " mercy "
is that they do not — but the "mercy" is that
they will not massacre and begin the strife that
would repeat the horrors of Haiti in the various
States of this Republic. Burn and shoot for
what ? That they may vote in Georgia, where
in front of me in the line stood a negro, whose
place was as sacred as mine, and whose vote as
safely counted ? That they may vote in the thir
teen districts in which they have elected their con
gressmen ? — in the 320 counties in which they
have elected their representatives, and in old Vir
ginia, where they came within 1400 votes of car
rying the State ?

As the 60,000 Virginia negroes who did vote
did so in admitted peace and safety, where was
the violence that prevented the needed 1400 from
leaving their fields, coming to the ballot box, and
giving the State to the Republicans ? And yet
slavery itself, in which the selling of a child from
its mother's arms and a wife from her husband
was permitted, never brought into reputable
print so villainous a suggestion as this, leveled
by a knave at a political condition which he
views from afar, and which it is proved does not
exist. To pass by the man who wrote these
words, how shall we judge the temper of a com-

87

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

munity in which they are applauded ? Are these
men blood of our blood that they permit such
things to go unchallenged ? Better that they
had refused us parole at Appomattox and had
confiscated the ruins of our homes, than twenty
years later to bring us under the dominion of
such passion as this. Hear another witness,
General Sherman, not in hot speech, but in cold
print : —

" The negro must be allowed to vote, and his vote must
be counted, otherwise, so sure as there is a God in heaven,
you will have another war, more cruel than the last, when
the torch and dagger will take the place of the muskets
of well-ordered battalions. Should the negro strike that
blow, in seeming justice, there will be millions to assist
them."

And this is the greatest living soldier of the
Union army. He covered the desolation he
sowed in city and country through these States
with the maxim that " cruelty in war, is mercy"
— and no one lifted the cloak. But when he in
sults the men he conquered, and endangers the re
newing growth of the country he wasted, with
this unmanly threat, he puts a stain on his name
the maxims of philosophy and fable from Socrates
all the way cannot cover, and the glory of Marl-
borough, were it added to his own, could not
efface.

No answer can be made in passion to these
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THE "SOLID SOUTH"

men. If the temper of the North is expressed in
their words, the South can do nothing but rally
her sons for their last defense and await in si
lence what the future may bring forth. This,
much should be said : The negro can never be
established in dominion over the white race of
the South. The sword of Grant and the bay
onets of his army could not maintain them in
the supremacy they had won from the helpless
ness of our people. No sword drawn by mortal
man, no army martialed by mortal hand, can re
place them in the supremacy from which they
were cast down by our people, for the Lord God
Almighty decreed otherwise when he created
these races, and the flaming sword of his arch
angel will enforce his decree and work out his
plan of unchangeable wisdom.

I do not believe the people of the North will
be committed to a violent policy. I believe in the
good faith and fair play of the American people.
These noisy insects of the hour will perish with
the heat that warmed them into life, and when
their pestilent cries have ceased, the great clock
of the Republic will strike the slow-moving and
tranquil hours, and the watchmen from the
streets will cry, "All's well — all's well!" I
thank God that through the mists of passion
that already cloud our Northern horizon comes
the clear, strong voice of President Harrison de-

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

claring that the South shall not suffer, but shall
prosper, in his election. Happy will it be for us
— happy for this country, and happy for his
name and fame, if he has the courage to with
stand the demagogues who clamor for our cruci
fixion, and the wisdom to establish a path in
which voters of all parties and of all sections
may walk together in peace and prosperity.

Should the President yield to the demands of
the pestilent, the country will appeal from his
decision. In Indiana and New York more than
2,000,000 votes were cast. By less than 16,000
majority these States were given to Harrison,
and his election thereby secured. A change of
less than 10,000 in this enormous poll would
restore the Democratic party to power. If
President Harrison permits this unrighteous
crusade on the peace of the South, and the pros
perity of the people, this change and more will
be made, and the Democratic party restored to
power.

In her industrial growth the South is daily
making new friends. Every dollar of Northern
money invested in the South gives us a new
friend in that section. Every settler among us
raises up new witnesses to our fairness, sincerity,
and loyalty. We shall secure from the North
more friendliness and sympathy, more champions
and friends, through the influence of our indus-

90

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

trial growth, than through political aspiration or
achievement. Few men can comprehend — would
that I had the time to dwell on this point to-day
— how vast has been the development, how swift
the growth, and how deep and enduring is laid
the basis of even greater growth in the future.
Companies of immigrants sent down from the
sturdy settlers of the North will solve the South
ern problem, and bring this section into full and
harmonious relations with the North quicker than
all the battalions that could be armed and mar-
tialed could do.

The tide of immigration is already springing
this way. Let us encourage it. But let us see
that these immigrants come in well-ordered pro
cession, and not pell-mell. That they come as
friends and neighbors — to mingle their blood
with ours, to build their homes on our fields, to
plant their Christian faith on these red hills/ and
not seeking to plant strange heresies of govern
ment and faith, but, honoring our Constitution
and reverencing our God, to confirm, and not es
trange, the simple faith in which we have been
reared, and which we should transmit unsullied
to our children.

It may be that the last hope of saving the old-
fashioned on this continent will be lodged in the
South. Strange admixtures have brought strange
results in the North. The anarchist and atheist

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

walk abroad in the cities, and, defying govern
ment, deny God. Culture has refined for itself
new and strange religions from the strong old
creeds.

The old-time South is fading from observance,
and the mellow church-bells that called the
people to the temples of God are being tabooed
and silenced. Let us, my countrymen, here to
day — yet a homogeneous and God-fearing people
— let us highly resolve that we will carry un
tainted the straight and simple faith — that we
will give ourselves to the saving of the old-fash
ioned, that we will wear in our hearts the
prayers we learned at our mother's knee, and
seek no better than that which fortified her life
through adversity, and led her serene and smiling
through the valley of the shadow.

Let us keep sacred the Sabbath of God in its
purity, and have no city so great, or village so
small, that every Sunday morning shall not
stream forth over towns and meadows the golden
benediction of the bells, as they summon the
people to the churches of their fathers, and ring
out in praise of God and the power of His might.
Though other people are led into the bitterness
of unbelief, or into the stagnation of apathy and
neglect — let us keep these two States in the
current of the sweet old-fashioned, that the sweet
rushing waters may lap their sides, and every-

92

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

where from their soil grow the tree, the leaf
whereof shall not fade and the fruit whereof
shall not die, but the fruit whereof shall be meat,
and the leaf whereof shall be healing.

In working out our civil, political, and religious
salvation, everything depends on the union of
our people. The man who seeks to divide them
now in the hour of their trial, that man puts am
bition before patriotism. A distinguished gentle
man said that " certain upstarts and speculators
were seeking to create a new South to the deri
sion and disparagement of the old," and rebukes
them for so doing. These are cruel and unjust
words. It was Ben Hill — the music of whose
voice hath not deepened, though now attuned to
the symphonies of the skies — who said, " There
was a South of secession and slavery — that
South is dead ; there is a South of union and free
dom — that South, thank God, is living, growing
every hour."

It was he who named the New South. One
of the " upstarts " said in a speech in New York :
"In answering the toast to the New South, I
accept that name in no disparagement to the Old
South. Dear to me, sir, is the home of my child
hood and the traditions of my people, and not for
the glories of New England history from Plym
outh Rock all the way, would I surrender the
least of these. Never shall I do, or say, aught to

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

dim the luster of the glory of my ancestors, won
in peace and war."

Where is the young man in the South who has
spoken one word in disparagement of our past,
or has worn lightly the sacred traditions of our
fathers ? The world has not equaled the unques
tioning reverence and undying loyalty of the
young man of the South to the memory of our
fathers. History has not equaled the cheerful
ness and heroism with which they bestirred them
selves amid the poverty that was their legacy, and
holding the inspiration of their past to be better
than rich acres and garnered wealth, went out
to do their part in rebuilding the fallen fortunes
of the South and restoring her fields to their pris
tine beauty. Wherever they have driven, — in
market-place, putting youth against experience,
poverty against capital ; in the shop, earning in
the light of their forges and the sweat of their
faces the bread and meat for those dependent
upon them ; in the forum, eloquent by instinct,
able though unlettered ; on the farm, locking
the sunshine in their harvests and spreading the
showers on their fields — everywhere my heart
has been with them, and I thank God that they
are comrades and countrymen of mine. I have
stood with them shoulder to shoulder as they met
new conditions without surrendering old faiths —
and I have been content to feel the grasp of their

94

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

hands and the throb of their hearts, and hear the
music of their quick step as they marched unfear-
ing into new and untried ways. If I should at
tempt to prostitute the generous enthusiasm of
these my comrades to my own ambition, I should
be unworthy. If any man, enwrapping himself
in the sacred memories of the old South, should
prostitute them to the hiding of his weakness, or
the strengthening of his failing fortunes, that man
would be unworthy. If any man for his own
advantage should seek to divide the old South
from the new, or the new from the old, — to sepa
rate these that in love hath been joined together,
— to estrange the son from his father's grave and
turn our children from the monuments of our
dead, to embitter the closing days of our veter
ans with suspicion of the sons who shall follow
them, — this man's words are unworthy and are
spoken to the injury of his people.

Some one has said in derision that the old men
of the South, sitting down amid their ruins, re
minded him " of the Spanish hidalgos sitting in
the porches of the Alhambra, and looking out to
sea for the return of the lost Armada." There
is pathos, but no derision, in this picture to me.
These men were our fathers. Their lives were
stainless. Their hands were daintily cast, and
the civilization they builded in tender and engag
ing grace hath not been equaled. The scenes

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

amid which they moved, as princes among men,
have vanished forever. A grosser and more mate
rial day has come, in which their gentle hands can
garner but scantily, and their guileless hearts fend
but feebly. Let them sit, therefore, in the dis
mantled porches of their homes, into which dis
honor hath never entered, to which discourtesy
is a stranger — and gaze out to the sea, beyond
the horizon of which their armada has drifted
forever. And though the sea shall not render
back for them the argosies that went down in
their ships, let us build for them in the land they
love so well a stately and enduring temple — its
pillars founded in justice, its arches springing
to the skies, its treasuries filled with substance ;
liberty walking in its corridors ; art adorning its
walls ; religion filling its aisles with incense, —
and here let them rest in honorable peace and
tranquillity until God shall call them hence to
"a house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens."

There are other things I wish to say to you
to-day, my countrymen, but my voice forbids. I
thank you for your courteous and patient atten
tion. And I pray to God — who hath led us
through sorrow and travail — that on this day
of universal thanksgiving, when every Christian
heart in this audience is uplifted in praise, that
He will open the gates of His glory and bend

96

THE "SOLID SOUTH"

down above us in mercy and love ! And that
these people who have given themselves unto
Him, and who wear His faith in their hearts,
that He will lead them even as little children
are led — that He will deepen their wisdom with
the ambition of His words — that He will turn
them from error with the touch of His Almighty
hand — that He will crown all their triumphs
with the light of His approving smile, and into
the heart of their troubles, whether of people or
State, that He will pour the healing of His mercy
and His grace.

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A PLEA FOR PROHIBITION

PREFATORY NOTE

Inasmuch as the following speech has never before
been published, the circumstances which called it forth
may be of interest. It was delivered during a hotly con
tested prohibition campaign in Atlanta, on the evening
of November 17, 1887. At a public meeting held two
weeks previously, Mr. Grady made a short address in
which he stated that, after weighing as best he could all
the arguments for and against the proposition to reenact
the law against the sale of whisky in Atlanta, he had
come to the deliberate conclusion that it was his impera
tive duty to advocate the side of prohibition. This
address elicited general comment, and Mr. Grady was
attacked with great severity by the anti-prohibitionists.
He was told by his friends that he had committed the
worst blunder of his life and had sealed his fate. In a
few days it was rumored about the streets that he had
recanted ; that so great a pressure had been brought to
bear upon him that he had declared his purpose to re
nounce the prohibition cause. Thereupon he announced
his intention to make a speech clearly denning his posi
tion and discussing the merits of the question at issue.
Though the meeting at which he spoke was held in an
immense warehouse, thousands of people were unable to
gain entrance. Captain Howell, Mr. Grady's associate
editor on the Constitution, addressed an anti-prohibition
meeting the same evening. When Mr. Grady rose
to speak, an audience of 8000 people greeted him with
tumultuous applause.

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A PLEA FOR PROHIBITION

Though the speech contains a number of local allusions,
it is given below — a fine example of both an argument
and a plea — with only slight abridgment.

Ladies and gentlemen: I thank you from the
bottom of my heart for this reception. I pre
sume the Constitution to-morrow will say in its
report of the two meetings of to-night, that more
people were out than live in Atlanta. If the
other meeting is as big as ours, it will be mighty
near the truth. It is hard to measure this meet
ing, because we had them when they went to the
opera house, and we could put that in one corner
of our building and not miss it. They realize
this, and they have an open-air meeting, also.
Well, we could not get all the open air into this
building ; so I trust that my partner, whom I
love, has such a crowd as this. I am satisfied
that I address to-night enough voters of this city
to absolutely, finally, and permanently settle the
great question that disturbs us. I have been
quoted as saying that I would give 11000 if I
had not spoken here two weeks ago. The state
ment is false ; but if it were true, I am here to
night to make the debt 110,000. If I have done
or said anything in the thirty -six years of my life
that has my more perfect approval than that
speech, I do not now remember it. I have been
abused roundly for making that speech. The
artesian well knows more mean things about me

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

now than I ever knew myself. I am proud of
the attention of the enemy. It shall not disturb
me. If I am not unbalanced by your generous
approval, I certainly shall not be deterred by
their ungenerous abuse. A friend of mine, a
gallant major, whose chaste and impassioned
oration has already become classic, states that
I am as good an anti as I am a prohibitionist,
and that he had a conversation with me, and I
talked anti-prohibition. I think the leaders of his
party will agree that he talks a little better on
one side than he does on the other, if we can
judge from the prophecies with which he has
gone into winter quarters with their consent. I
had long believed in high license, and I firmly
declined for this reason to take part in your
former campaign. But since the last election I
have watched this experiment closely, and loving
Atlanta, and zealous for her welfare, I have often
been discouraged, and I have often said so in per
fect frankness ; but my investigation of the past
few weeks has carried me beyond doubt, that
this experiment, imperfectly tried, has been
wholly successful, and if it must be modified,
that it can better be modified without barrooms
than through them. This conclusion, reached by
my reason, is approved by my heart and my con
science, and from it I shall not be shaken. Now
it is said that I should not speak or work in this

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A PLEA FOR PROHIBITION

factional fight, because I have found Atlanta with
out faction always at my side. Is it immodest
in me to say that I have never urged this people
to my own advancement ? I have never asked
Atlanta for office or emolument. As I have never
profited by your confidence for my personal pro
motion in the past, I shall never do so in the fu
ture. If I can live among this people that I love,
as a friend and a fellow-worker, following my
chosen profession with reasonable success, abide
with you to the end, and at the last die in your
regard and confidence — if I can leave my son
a sober and honest man among you, inheriting
through kindly memory of his father the charity
his young life may need, and finding his pride
and inspiration in saying, when he looks abroad
on the splendid Atlanta that is to be, " My fa
ther's hand had part in this upbuilding, and his
life was given for this work " — then the earthly
measure of my ambition shall be filled.

I have spoken thus personally because I want
to strip this question to-night of any personal en
tanglements or embarrassments that might mis
lead or obstruct you in finding a true and right
solution of the problem. It is the gravest prob
lem, my friends, that has ever confronted us. It
lies deeper than the most thoughtful men believe.
It affects not only the welfare of this community,
but it rests upon every heart and every hearth-

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stone in this town. I ask you for your patient
and impartial hearing to-night. I should despise
myself and my cause if I willfully mislead you
by the exaggeration of one fact or the suppression
of another. We are equally interested in finding
the right solution of this question, and I beg you
to listen that together, as comrades and friends,
we may come to it, in soberness and truth.

Now, in my former speech, I laid down two
propositions. I have heard scores of men say
that, if that speech stood the test of investigation,
they could not find, and they would not look for,
an excuse for voting against the experiment in
defense of which it was spoken !

Now, I shall review that speech for a moment.
I said, first, that prohibition had not had a fair
trial in Atlanta. Is there a man in this vast
crowd that will say that it has had a fair trial ?
Unexpired licenses dragged more than half through
it, with every legal step obstructed, and with
every fine contested, with the machinery work
ing unsatisfactorily ; will any man say that this
experiment has had a fair trial in Atlanta? Is
there any business man who would be content
with such a trial given to any business project
in his own affairs that involved so much and was
so far-reaching and important ?

I hold, in the second place, that, imperfectly
tried, it has been an unspeakable success. I intro-

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A PLEA FOR PROHIBITION

duce four real estate agents as witnesses that
distress warrants, the most pernicious form of
debt collection, had decreased in a remarkable
degree. That statement was assaulted and the
records were brought up to disprove it. Next
day I brought back my four witnesses, every man
standing by what he had said, and I had five
additional witnesses, making every real estate
agent in the city but two. The records of the
courts have been searched, and I have now the
statement from the three justice courts of this
city (omitting Judge Butt's, which no one can
get), showing on their books that there has been
a decrease of ninety-five distress warrants for
this year as compared with 1885.

Some one is represented as stating, in discuss
ing personal liberty and the inalienable rights
of man, " I pity the man who can't get above
distress warrants." Now, who can get higher
than the homes of the people ? Who can find
better work than to touch with healing, hearts
that suffer and are breaking ? Can legal abstrac
tions take you higher, or can splitting hairs on
personal liberty give you better work ? I pity
the man who can sit in his office and refine musty
doctrines, while human hearts are breaking all
about him, and cheeks and steps are faltering,
and want and hunger are swarming against the
citadel of human life and happiness.

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

He may find a lesson in the course of the great
Teacher who went through the byways of this
earth healing the sick and wrapping with com
passion the poor and humble, while the Pharisees
and the scribes sat disdaining in the temple. The
world has learned that lesson, and hearts open to
suffering that are closed to learning and to love.
The truth is, the procession of the evicted, — those
distressed from their homes, the pitiful procession,
of the wife and her children huddled about her
and the weak but loving father walking through
the city and seeking a hole to hide in, — this pro
cession, the pathos of which thought cannot
fathom or tongue describe, marched straight into
the hearts and conscience of this people, and the
antis know it.

One further point. They talk about garnish
ments. They went to Grant Wilkins, and from
the way he stuck up to them, the G in his name
might stand for Gibraltar. He said I did not
tell half the truth. He is a man of profound
convictions, and he was the strongest anti I ever
saw, and yet he says he will not vote for it again,
because he can't do it with his knowledge of
the facts as they are under prohibition, as seen
by his eyes and heard by his ears.

That other manufacturer, whom I now pro
claim to be Jacob Elsas, — why didn't they take
his statement? He is published as an anti-pro-

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A PLEA FOR PROHIBITION

hibition committeeman, but he says he has seen
this thing in his business and it convinces him
of the benefit to Atlanta, and he will not vote
again to put it out. He says that prohibition is
undoubtedly the thing for Atlanta.

Take the statement of Mr. Robert Schmidt, pub
lished as a member of the anti-prohibition com
mittee. He stated that he knew ten families in
his own knowledge who had been raised under
prohibition from destitution and dependence to
comfort and independence, and Mr. Raoul said to
Mr. Inman, " I was an anti-prohibitionist, but the
statement given to me by Mr. Schmidt, about the
effect of prohibition on families within his own
knowledge, has almost converted me to prohibi
tion." Now here is the statement of three
prominent anti-prohibitionists.

But I went still further. I showed that not
only had distress warrants decreased, but I
showed that the whole litigation of justice
courts had decreased 2595 cases in the civil dock
ets and 431 cases on the criminal side, and an
anti actually said that the decrease of 2595 cases
in the justice courts in this town implies a stag
nation in business. The baker's wagon may roll
up to your door, the coal wagon may come
where it never came before and dump you out a
ton of coal, the butcher's wagon may deliver you
meat, or the grocery wagon its sundries, but be-

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cause the bailiff doesn't amble round to your back
door on his horse there is a stagnation in business !

Why, think of it! Because families sit in
their homes and are happy by their firesides, and
because they don't obstruct the streets with
evicted processions, there is stagnation in your
business ! The merchants may go to New York
three or four times a year and buy goods, mills
and factories may run night and day, unable to
fill their orders, but just because the cobwebs are
gathering in your justice courts, and there are
2595 fewer cases for the young lawyers to tear
their hair in these courts at, business is stag
nated ! Did you ever hear such an argument
in your life ? Think of it. I tell you, in speaking
as a man among you, with loving affection and
comradeship for the whole people of this town, I
tell you that the decrease in the justice courts,
civil and criminal business, is the measure of your
increasing prosperity and improvement.

Do you want to revive the industry of distress
warrants? And to revive the litigation in the
justice courts, civil and criminal, do you want
to put oil in the rusty joints of the bailiff's horse,
and let him again take the place of the baker's
wagon and the butcher's cart ? Remember the
decrease in justice court civil cases is 2595 ! and
this decrease is the measure of your comfort and
independence, of your growing prosperity.

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A PLEA FOR PROHIBITION

You know the misery and shame and sorrow of
a little suit for less than $100 that you can't pay,
and the bailiff at your door. If you have never
seen it at home, you have seen it at the houses of
your neighbors. It means eviction often, and it
means shame, humiliation, and deprivation al
ways. Now, do you want to vote against all
the prosperity your city now enjoys and against
this decrease in the civil business of justice
courts of 2595 cases and in the criminal business
of 431 cases ?

There are two reasons advanced why you
should do it. One is something about "per
sonal liberty," which I have forgotten and which
I don't care about. Honestly, that argument
is not worth discussing among sensible people.
You talk about personal liberty ; when Sam
Jones spoke in the opera house on Sunday (and
that was wrong, I think myself), here in Atlanta
the anti-prohibitionists denounced the prohibi
tionists for that as a desecration of the holy Sab
bath, and the very next week in New York the
liquor dealers assembled in Albany, denounced
the law closing saloons in New York City on
Sunday, and demanded that neither party should
nominate any members of the legislature that
would not vote to open saloons in New York on
Sunday. And they used the very same talk
about "personal liberty of the American citi-

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

zen," and that the closing of the saloons on Sun
day was an infringement on that liberty not to
be borne. Personal liberty must end where pub
lic injury begins !

Bear with me just a little while, while I show
you why, in my opinion, barrooms should not
be returned to this city on business grounds, and
why we should hold on to prohibition, if for no
other reason, because it has increased, and will
further increase, our material prosperity.

Now, what is the first thing that makes a city
prosperous ? It is population — the antis claim
that population has decreased under prohibition.
They say that a great many people have left
Atlanta. That is true, but I know that a great
many more have come in to fill their places. I
don't discuss the quality of those who went or
came.

There is a proverb of politeness which says,
"Welcome the coming and speed the parting
guest." The mayor of Macon was reported to
have sent word that he would help Atlanta stand
by prohibition because it had sent a great many
of our people to Macon. The very day afterwards
the Macon Telegraph said the Macon people must
do something to get rid of the vagrants of that
town. It said, "They are standing on every
street corner ; they are infesting the houses, beg
ging for bread, and they are robbing us night

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A PLEA FOR PROHIBITION

after night, and we can't stand it." That's what
the Macon paper says about it.

There have been how many cases of vagrancy
in Atlanta in the past year ? They say they have
got our population. I expect they have. But
the prohibitionists claim that our population has
increased. This was shown by a larger attend
ance at the public schools — nearly 1000 in
crease this year. The antis replied, " You have
built more schoolhouses." We passed.

Then we said that there were more people be
cause there are more houses, and every real es
tate agent saying that he has fewer vacant houses
than ever before — more houses, and all fuller
than ever, looked like growth instead of decrease.
I suggested that perhaps they were inhabited by
the shades of Washington and Jefferson, but the
real estate agents said not. The antis then ex
plained that — it's wonderful how they will ex
plain everything but their own figures — that
these houses are inhabited by women and chil
dren, whose husbands have been driven away by
prohibition. So we advanced one step further.
Street tax is something which pertains exclu
sively to the masculine gender. They said there
were 3814 street taxpayers in 1885 and only
3600 in 1887. We investigated that, and the
records show that they are badly wrong. That
was just the number reported upon the tax

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assessor's books, but the records of your city tax
collector show that there were over 12,000 street
taxpayers in Atlanta, in 1886, making 4070 more
in your city in the first year of prohibition, and
the tax men say there will be a furthur increase
this year. These are not men whose husbands
have gone — I mean women. These are not
mothers whose sons have gone, but this is the
record from your city books. It shows an in
crease of 4070 taxpayers over the year before.
One step further. You have got registered in
this county to-night 2100 more voters than were
registered here two years ago. Well, now I am
satisfied that some of these gentlemen have reg
istered under error. We will see who they are
before we get through with that. But there were
as many gentlemen, perhaps, who registered by
mistake two years ago, with 130 barrooms in
the city, as were registered by mistake this year.
We know there were 1600 then. I don't think
there are many more now. Not only are there
more voters registered, but there are numbers of
men in this city who can't register because they
have not lived in the State one year or in the
county six months. When people went away,
their names went off the registry books at once,
but when people come in, it takes a year's
residence in the State and six months in the
county to replace the man that's gone. I know,

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in Grant Wilkins's shop, there are twenty-eight
men ; in another shop, there are thirty-three men
who cannot register, and you will find that there
are all over the city men who have not been here
a year who are as good citizens as we lost.

In spite of this the increase in your registry
list of voters is 2100 this year over two years ago.
Is there any getting around this, and around the
increase of 4070 payers of street tax, as shown by
your official records ?

That much for population. Just remember
now that we have not lost population, but that
we have gained, by the records, 4070 street tax
payers in one year, and that your registration
books show that we gained 2140 voters over the
registration of two years ago. They cannot talk
about the records after that, because the town
has grown, taking five members of a family to
a voter, over 10,000 people after prohibition
went into effect, after deducting those who left
on account of prohibition.

Let me go one step further. After your popu
lation, what do you next consider as going to
make up a town ?

I am going to stick to the home because it is
the type and center of our city, of our civiliza
tion. Prosperous homes mean a prosperous city ;
cheerless homes, an unprosperous town. From
the comfortable home, with its ruddy windows

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and its laughing children, streams the light that
illumines every department of trade or industry,
whether the light comes from the cottage or a
palace. From the cheerless and desolate home
comes the chill that paralyzes every interest
worth preserving.

When you go into a home, what is the first
thing you look after ? It is the hearthstone —
to see if there is a fire. The hearthstone is the
heart of the home, and the fire glowing and
sparkling, with the little children gathered about
it, ruddy-faced and happy, is to the house what
sunshine is to God's flowers. It is about the
hearthstone that the family gathers. There you
find the wife, the helpmate of the husband and
his joy, who has shared his sorrow and his trouble ;
you find the little ones cherished. The old grand
mother in the corner, smiling and peaceful, her
last, best days blessed and softened by filial love
and care.

Think about the picture around the hearth
stone in an humble home. Did you ever think
about grandmother and a little child? Is there
any love on this earth like it ? Is there any love
as sweet and pathetic? See the way they sit
about the hearthstone of the home ! How they
cling to each other ! How the little ones clamber
about her knees and look into her face ! How
the old heart is bathed afresh in the rapture of

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the child, and how the old, withered lips are
attuned and used to the childish prattle ! How
closely they cling together ! and yet how diverse
are their ways ! The old grandmother, with the
lengthening shadows falling on her back as she
walks down the hill, her face turned towards the
skies beyond the pearly gates of which she can
almost hear the singing of the hosts waiting to
bid her welcome ; the child, turned with ardent
face to the attractions and contentions of the
world, with the rising sun falling full on its eyes.

At last the time for separation comes. As
each takes its God-given way, how ready to go,
and yet how loth to part ! How they turn as
they drift away, looking one to another, while
the parting words grow fainter and fainter and
fainter, until they fall by the wayside and the
child's voice is lost in the rising clamor of the
world, and her voice melts away in the kindling
music of the skies. There they sit about the
hearthstone, the grandma and the child, and
between them the wife, holding in her heart the
double love that binds them together.

Think of- the master of this home — father,
son, and husband in one — as he works at his
bench or walks whistling through the icy night
air, happy in the consciousness that his loved
ones are warm and snug and happy in their
home. What would he take for the conscious-

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ness that instead of huddling comfortless about a
chill hearthstone, the fire burns brightly for them?
What would you take to rob him of that con
sciousness ? Well, now keep that picture in
your mind while I tell you what the coal dealers
of Atlanta say about their retail trade this
winter !

Here is their testimony ! Do you remember
how you used to see women with a quarter or a
fifty-cent piece shivering at the coal yards, hurry
ing to buy a handful of coal, that they might
get home where their little ones were suffering?
How you used to see men hurrying through the
streets each with a basketful of coal on his arm,
knowing that at home the breath from their
lungs was almost freezing on his children's lips ?
And the little handcarts that used to fill your
streets, carrying a handful of coal, barely enough
to give a child a taste of fire ? And don't you
know the number of houses there were that in
spite of all this were cold and cheerless and
without relief ? Where are the people who used
to buy a pinch of coal, and the handcarts that
used to haul it ? They are gone ! Mr. Wilson
testifies : " There has been a remarkable change in
my business. Men that used to buy fifty cents'
worth now buy a ton. I used to have twenty
little handcarts to deliver coal in; now I use
but one, and I have double my two-horse teams."

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Mr. Bridger testified he scarcely has a call for
coal on credit now. Mr. D'Alvigny testifies he
cannot get enough to supply the demand. Mr.
John T. Stocks says there is twice as much sold
as ever before.

Every coal dealer testifies that there has been
a remarkable increase in his business. Instead of
buying it haphazard in little quantities, when
the twenty-five cents that bought it was chanced
between the barkeeper and the coal dealer, they
testify without break that the people have laid
in twice as much coal as ever before in a single
fall, that they buy in large quantities and on
cash almost entirely. Houses will be warmed
this winter day and night that scarcely knew
what fire was last winter. Ask the coal dealers,
and if their testimony convinces you, ask if it
isn't worth something to accomplish this. . . .

Let us take the question of getting a home.
The statistics show that 678 men bought homes
in the last two years against 153 men who bought
homes in the last two years of the liquor reign.
Just think of that ! There are 678 men in two
years who have become independent home own
ers against 153 who became home owners in the
last two years of liquor !

Take the loan and building associations. I
have always contended that they are the most
useful institutions in a city's growth. They are

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bulwarks against disorder and riot. They are
better than regiments of soldiers to insure the
protection of life and property against a possible
mob. There were six of these institutions in
1885, and there are fifteen to-night. There is no
mistaking the significance of that. A building
and loan association is organized only when there
are enough men with a surplus of money to make
them profitable.

Six were sufficient to do the business of this
town two years ago — we have fifteen now. And
the working people of Atlanta are paying now
for homes or for savings through this one agency,
perhaps $10,000 a month, or $120,000 a year, that
they paid for something else when liquor was in
Atlanta. Where six building and loan associa
tions were sufficient to do the business of this
town, that is, to furnish money to build homes on
installments, fifteen are required now.

Take the question of banks. There was one
savings bank here in 1885 ; to-day there are four,
or, I believe, five. One man testified to me that
he has $60,000 in his bank, the earnings and sav
ings of the working people in this city. His bank
did not exist in Atlanta two years ago. Where
did that money go then ?

We had, in 1885, $1,300,000 banking capital
and surplus. In the last two years we have
added $1,325,000 in capital and surplus, making

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12,625,000 in banks, against $1,300,000 two years
ago. I do not believe there is a record like that
in any city in the South. In two years we have
more than doubled our banking capital and accu
mulation, and that, too, without counting the bank
of Mr. Gould, now building on Decatur Street, or
the new bank whose charter is advertised for by
Messrs. Adair, Fitten, and others ; the bank of my
good friend, the Hon. David Mayer, who will soon
have in a bank in this town a comfortable for
tune, that was formerly in the wholesale liquor
trade.

There is nothing more necessary to Atlanta
than banking capital. We all agree that it was
once her trouble and reproach that she had less
than half the banking capital of Southern cities
of similar size, and that one bank in Savannah
had more capital and surplus than every bank in
Atlanta. That is what we needed, and we have
doubled our banking capital in the two years of
prohibition. . . .

They talk about manufacturers. That is the
life of a city. That is what makes Atlanta. By
the census of 1880 there were 47 per cent
of the people of this town engaged in gainful
pursuits. Atlanta's very life and breath is and
has been her shops and factories.

Now take the record. I say to you that there
has been added one million of dollars to the

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manufacturing capital of this city in the last two
years, and that no two years of her previous his
tory will make up a record like that. Colonel
G. W. Scott gives me the figures on guano. He
says $250,000 have been spent in guano factories
in this county in the last two years. One hun
dred and twenty thousand dollars have been spent
in reestablishing the Atlanta bridge works by
Mr. Grant Wilkins and Mr. Miles ; $50,000 for a
glass factory ; $150,000 for a new cotton-seed oil
mill, or over half a million in four items. It is
useless for me to go over the list of industries
that have been added or enlarged. But I tell
you it reaches one million of dollars in two years.
Doesn't that look like a dead town ?

Take the men who had already invested in
manufacturing, and they have been compelled to
increase their faculties for their increased business.
Take Boyd & Baxter, who, under the liquor
reign, worked only ten or twelve hands, are now
putting up a seventy-thousand-dollar plant to
manufacture furniture ; Mr. Trowbridge says he
is actually turning off orders, for he can't fill
them. The fall industries have swarmed in : the
starch factory folks say, " We came here under
prohibition, and it is good enough for us ; busi
ness rushing." A soap factory established, and
the owner delighted ; Norris & Co., a shirt fac
tory, and Northrop's shirt factory doubled ; a

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site just sold for a piano factory, and the capital
up for it ; Deloach & Bro. added $10,000 to their
machinery ; Haiman's plow works, dismantled
when prohibition came in, are now booming, with
more than they can handle ; the E. T., Va. & Ga.
shops increased 126 hands ; Foote's new trunk
factory as prosperous as even its genial and clever
proprietor deserves. But why need to go further ?
When did Atlanta ever in two years add $1,000,000
to her manufacturing capital ?

In the Constitution this morning there were
some interviews asserting that Atlanta had de
creased in property. I defend Atlanta against
this charge. I will show that these witnesses
are mistaken — honestly mistaken, I doubt not,
but still mistaken. Mr. Traynham says, "It is
difficult to get capital carpenters in Atlanta."
Mr. May just below him says, " Put an advertise
ment in the papers for carpenters and it brings
them by the dozen." Now one of these gentle
men is mistaken. Traynham says you can't get
them, and May says that the smallest sort of an
advertisement will bring a dozen. Which is
wrong ? . . .

I tell you, gentlemen, they are misleading when
they tell you the prosperity of this town is dimin
ished. I know it. I have studied the situation.
I have studied this old town as I have studied
nothing else — not even the Bible, and I know

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the town and I know it is in a better condition
than ever before.

Take the question of wages : I have the testi
mony of fifty men on the fact that the wages are
higher than ever before, or in the last ten years.
They put the increase from 15 to 50 per cent.

I have shown you the home industries have
increased, that the real estate associations have
increased, that the banking capital and surplus
have increased. I have the statement of a banker
that the deposits in this city are one million of
dollars more to-night than they were a year ago.
My friend, Jacob Haas, says one million of dollars
have gone out of Atlanta. Well, if so, Atlanta
has made more money in the past two years than
any city ever did, for it is accumulated here by
the millions. Why, Mr. Haas has just started
a bank himself, and he is the happiest man in
Atlanta. He is so happy about it that it is ru
mored that he roosts at the bank at night. The
money just rolls into his vaults, and he is so happy.
When you ask him about his bank, he cannot find
words to express it. He just puts his hand on
his heart and rolls his eyes up to the skies.

It is another case of where the witness is de
lighted with his own business, but is afraid it is
hurting somebody else. My special friend, Bob
Lowry, admits that he has had better business in
his bank the past year than ever in his life, and

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he is going to enlarge it into a stock company,
and could get a million dollars' capital on the
showing of his books for the past year. But he,
too, is afraid it has hurt somebody else. It has
helped him, but he thinks it will hurt the town.

But let me talk about Mr. Haas and his real
estate a little. He says he does not issue any
distress warrants now — he admits he doesn't is
sue them, you see, and which is good — because his
tenants take the pony homestead on him. Well,
if I were one of his tenants and wanted to get
away from him, I would take a horse homestead.
Mr. Haas is in the Capital City Real Estate Com
pany. His company has bought real estate at a
cost of 8130,000. It is assessed by his board at
8160,000, and Mr. Haas has stated it is worth
$200,000. Any loss there? The company had
one public sale. It sold, for $32,000, property
that cost a short time before $20,000. They sold
the Eiseman store for $35,000 the other day, and
it cost $27,500. Any loss there ?

I want to talk to you about real estate. The
building of houses is the cheapest thing and the
most unnecessary thing if you have enough for
your population. A town with too many houses
and too few people and too few factories and
railroads is the poorest sort of a town. Now, in
1885, we had too many houses and too few banks
and manufactories. I have shown you how we

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have added to our banks and manufactories;
how we put $450,000 cash into the Hawkinsville
road by private subscription. When did Atlanta
ever do that before ? When did she ever put
one third as much by private subscription into a
railroad ? Now to show you how cheap build
ing is. Take the additional capital and surplus
in our banks over two years ago, the $450,000
put into the building pof the Hawkinsville Rail
road and the surplus of two years in our insurance
company and that would give you enough money
to build a row of cottages six miles long and a
row of three-story brick stores from the Constitu
tion office to the Georgia railroad depot. Think
of that ! This money has not gone away. It
has not been scared away from Atlanta. It has
stayed here. It is ready to invest in whatever
Atlanta needs most. It is here and it is going
to stay here, and continue Atlanta's growth and
prosperity.

Now, in spite of the 130 barrooms vacated,
and the people who left, we have filled the
vacant buildings, and Atlanta's homes and stores
are to-day packed as never before ! I have got
the statements of every real estate agent in this
city, but one. They say they have more houses
on their rent lists than ever before, and fewer
vacant houses. Two of them lately advertised
for 100 houses. They all say they could rent

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scores of houses if they had them. Go ask
them!

Next spring you will see immense building
again, no matter which way the election goes.

But do not think there has been no building.
They advertise an interview with Mr. Gould
and assert that he "is building the only brick
store built here since prohibition." That is their
assertion. I have a list here of eleven brick
stores on Decatur Street built since prohibition,
on the very street, mind you, on which Mr.
Gould is building. Mr. S. M. Inman states that
he has built eight brick stores himself since
prohibition — started and finished them — and
rented every one of them and gets 10 per cent
on the investment. And yet they say Mr.
Gould is building the only brick store built in
Atlanta since prohibition.

Take the question of rent. Suppose rents
had gone up sharply in the last two years, what
a howl there would have been against prohibition
for putting up rents ! Is it an unmixed evil
now that rents fell a little ? Three fourths of
the people are renters, and if rents have been too
high, it is but right that they should come down
to a proper level.

But I don't believe they have done so. Mr.
Headly complains that his rents have decreased.
That is doubtless true. He rented largely to

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barrooms and gambling saloons. There was
Paul Jones, wholesale liquors, in one of his
stores. The Big Bonanza had a barrooom down
stairs and gambling room upstairs. There was
Kenny & Werner and the Reading Room billiard
room. Then there was Thurman's saloon out on
Marietta, and Hunter's saloon out there.

Now, property brings more rent for saloons
and gambling than it will for anything else ;
it ought to. Now Mr. Headly's property which
rented for that purpose has decreased. The
offer he says he got of 13000 for one place now
renting for much less is, I learn, from a saloon
man who wants it downstairs and upstairs.
But has Mr. Headly the right to ask Atlanta to
vote liquor back so that he can get a barroom
back in his Big Bonanza and increased rent
therefor ? He would not ask it !

But now take the property he owns that did
not rent for barroom purposes. It is the Headly
building. It is packed with tenants who pay as
well as ever. Messrs. Goode & Co. have the
first floor. They got it from Mr. Headly under
a lease they made under liquor. Since prohibi
tion they have been offered $500 per annum
advance if they would give it up, and they have
had a half-dozen applications for it. That is a
piece of Mr. Headly's property that has always
rented for regular business. One of the tenants

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of that building has been offered 1500 a year
increase if he would give it up. Take the
Connally building. It has a saloon in it. There
was a decrease of $15 a month in the rent of
that saloon. They quote that, and leave the
impression that the building has lost in rents.
But there are three stores in that building, and
they have increased in rent $25 a month. Here
is 175 a month increase in rent in one building
in the stores, against $15 a month decrease in
the barroom end of it. Yet it is used as an ex
ample of how rents have diminished. Take Mr.
Traynham. He quotes one or two pieces of his
property, the rents on which have decreased.
Mr. J. W. Goldsmith went for one and asked
him, " Mr. Traynham, is not the rental income
of your entire property greater now than it was
in 1885 ? " Mr. Traynham replied that it was ;
that he had not a single vacant house now. So
it goes. There may be a decreased rent here
or there, but the sum total is bigger, and it is
paid better and more promptly. My friends,
this question is worth studying. Go to the books
of every real estate agent in Atlanta. They will
tell you they have sold more property this year,
and at better prices, than in 1885. Colonel
Adair has just said his books show an increase
of $356,000 over 1885. Can this testimony be
doubted ?

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Mr. Bob Richards says he is afraid that if
liquor does not come back here, there will be
riots. I do not connect the anti-prohibition
cause in Atlanta with the anarchists. I regret
sincerely that a remark I made in my last speech
was so construed. I have not said a word of
willful abuse, and I will not. But it is not the
absence of liquor that makes riots; it is the
presence of it. You take the place in which
the anarchists' plots were formed, and it was a
saloon. Take the place in which their papers
are published ; it is over saloons. Herr Most
and the men who met to sympathize with them
in New York met in a saloon. Now I shall join
hands with any party to improve the condition
of Atlanta, no matter how this election may go,
but how can the anti-prohibitionists call on the
prohibitionists to help quell the storm raised by the
return of liquor to Atlanta when they have con
stantly abused them as villains, hypocrites, and
drunkards and liars ? As soon might Robespierre
have called on the Girondists in France to stem
the tumult that he raised, and in the midst of
which he lost his head.

My friends, the road of peace in Atlanta is the
road of fairness and frankness. By a local vote
of this people this city was committed to the
experiment of prohibition. By that vote Atlanta
was to test for the first time whether the liquor

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traffic can be throttled in cities and held in sub
jection. Civilization has a right to demand, and
Atlanta can hardly refuse, .that this trial shall be
full and perfect. There will be no peace in
Atlanta until this trial has been made. The
prohibitionists cannot surrender their conscience
on a trial of hardly twelve months, with ob
structions thrown constantly in its way. I will
stand, as they will stand, for a fair trial. Give
it two years. Everything is now ready to test
it fairly. If at the end of that time it has not
demonstrated its success, and has not shown
that it prospers this city in its business and its
morals, then I tell you frankly I will join in any
movement to try some other method of suppress
ing liquor drinking in Atlanta. But until it has
had this trial, neither I nor a prohibitionist in this
city can in self-respect surrender that position.
The way to peace is to give prohibition a thou
sand majority, then pass the dispensary bill,
amend the law as it should be amended, and let
it stand or fall on the record it makes in the next
two years.

Now for a last word, my friends. I never
spoke to you from deeper conviction than I speak
to-night. I beg of you in the interest of peace
and fairness to give this experiment a full trial.
Note what it has done in a year of imperfect
trial. Give it two years more that it may

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demonstrate what it can do. Then if it fails, it
will fail ; if it is good, it will stand.

My friends, hesitate before you vote liquor
back into Atlanta, now that it is shut out.
Don't trust it. It is powerful, aggressive, and
universal in its attacks. To-night it enters an
humble home to strike the roses from a woman's
cheek, and to-morrow it challenges this Repub
lic in the halls of Congress. To-day it strikes a
crust from the lips of a starving child, and to
morrow levies tribute from the government it
self. There is no cottage in this city humble
enough to escape it — no palace strong enough to
shut it out. It defies the law when it cannot
coerce suffrage. It is flexible to cajole, but
merciless in victory. It is the mortal enemy of
peace and order. The despoiler of men, the
terror of women, the cloud that shadows the face
of children, the demon that has dug more graves
and sent more souls unshrived to judgment
than all the pestilences that have wasted life
since God sent the plagues to Egypt, and all the
wars that have been fought since Joshua stood
beyond Jericho. Oh, my countrymen, loving
God and humanity, do not bring this grand old
city again under the dominion of that power ! It
can profit no man by its return. It can uplift
no industry, revive no interest, remedy no wrong.
You know that it cannot. It comes to destroy,

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and it shall profit mainly by the ruin of your
sons or mine. It comes to mislead human souls
and to crush human hearts under its rumbling
wheels. It comes to destroy the wife's love into
despair, and her pride into shame. It comes to
still the laughter on the lips of little children.
It comes to stifle all the music of the home and
fill it with silence and desolation. It comes to
ruin your body and mind, to wreck your home,
and it knows that it must measure its prosperity
by the swiftness and certainty with which it
wrecks this work. Now will you vote it back ?
Why are you asked to vote it back ? It is
claimed that it has had a fair trial. It has not
had a fair trial, and you know it. This issue
should not have been forced on us at this time.
It is claimed that it has hurt your city. I show
you to-night that it has prospered it beyond par
allel or precedent. But it is said we will get
peace if we bring it back. Now we all want
peace. We all want this agitation stopped. I
tell you the way to stop it is to give prohibi
tion a fair trial. Give it the trial its magnitude
demands; the trial that its supporters are deter
mined under God's mercy it shall have in this
town sooner or later. It has not had a fair trial.
Now it is ready for trial. The liquor licenses
have expired, the wine rooms will be wiped out,
the machinery is oiled, and the decks are cleared
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for action. Give prohibition two years' trial
from the 26th of November, and two years from
now it will stand or fall on its merits without
agitation or disturbance.

If you are in doubt about what you should
do, give us the benefit of the doubt. Give the
doubt to the churches of this city that stand un
broken in this cause. Give the doubt to the
twenty thousand prayers that ascend nightly
for this cause from the women and children of
Atlanta — prayers uttered so silently that you
cannot catch their whispered utterance, but so
sincerely that they speed their soft entreaty
through the singing hosts of heaven into the
heart of the living God. If you are in doubt as
to what your duty is, turn for this once to your
old mother, whose gray hairs shall plead with
you as nothing else should — remember how she
has loved you all her life and how her heart
yearns for you now. Take her old hand in
yours, look into her eyes fearlessly as you did
when you were a barefoot boy, and say, " I have
run my politics all my life, and to-day I am
going to give one vote for you. How shall I
cast it ? " Watch the tears start from her shin
ing eyes, feel the lump rising in your throat, and
tell me if that is not better than "personal
liberty." If you are in doubt, ask your wife;
ask her who years ago put her hand in yours,

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and, adoring and trusting, left the old home nest
and went with you into the unknown world ;
remember how she has stood by you when all
else forsook ; how she has lived only in your life,
and carried your sorrows as her own, and ask
her how you shall vote.

I do not believe that women should counsel
men in politics, but this question is deeper than
politics. Your wife need not tell you how to
vote on the tariff, or on candidates, or on any
political issue, but this is her election as well as
yours. On this jeopardy is staked the home
you builded together, the happiness you have
had together, and the welfare of the little chil
dren in whose veins your blood and hers run
commingled. Her stake and theirs on this elec
tion is greater than yours. Then ask her, if you
have any doubt, how you should vote on that
day.

Now a word to the good women here. You
can do great work quietly and gently in your
homes for this cause and for the good of your
city. You can do this work in the home circle,
where no man can say you nay.

Mothers, go to your son on election morning,
call him back to the time when he learned God's
name at your knees, and wake when he would
in the night, he would find your soft eyes above
him and your loving hands about him, and say,

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" My son, find your way this morning in mem
ory to those days when nothing stood between
us, and when these hands sheltered and pro
tected you."

Wives, go to your husbands that morning.
Not in pique or criticism, but with a love and
tenderness that shall break through his pride
or indifference, lay his hand lovingly on the
heads of the little ones, the pride of his life and
yours — oh, you who went down into the very
jaws of death that you might give them to him !
— and say, "My husband, whatever you do to
day, do it for these little ones and for me."

Now, my friends, I have done. What I have
spoken has been in sober earnestness and truth. If
what I have said has impressed you, I beg of you to
let the impression deepen rather than pass away,
for I know and you know that issue goes deeper
than words can go. It involves thousands of
homes redeemed from want and desolation ; it
involves thousands of hearts now rejoicing that
late were breaking ; it involves the fate of this
tremendous experiment that Atlanta must settle
for the American people. Against it there is
nothing but the whim of personal liberty. Your
city has prospered under prohibition as it has
never prospered before. If you are a merchant
or a manufacturer, your books will tell you this.
You know that you have prospered this year in

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your business ; ask your neighbor of his business.
Look abroad about you on these bustling streets,
on these busy stores, on these shops and fac
tories in which the fires scarcely ever die, and in
which the workmen are never idle, and then
vote in the light of reason and of conscience,
and however you vote, may God bless you, and
the city you love so well.

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An oration delivered before the Literary Societies of the Uni
versity of Virginia, June 25, 1889

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: In thank
ing you for this cordial — this Virginia — wel
come, let me say that it satisfies my heart to
be with you to-day. This is my alma mater.
Kind, in the tolerant patience with which she
winnowed the chaff of idle days and idler nights
that she might find for me the grain of knowl
edge and of truth, and in the charity with
which she sealed in sorrow rather than in anger
my brief but stormy career within these walls.
Kinder yet, that her old heart has turned lov
ingly after the lapse of twenty years to her
scapegrace son in a distant State, and, recalling
him with this honorable commission, has sum
moned him to her old place at her knees. Here
at her feet, with the glory of her presence break
ing all about me, let me testify that the years
have but deepened my reverence and my love,
and my heart has owned the magical tenderness
of the emotions first kindled amid these sacred
scenes. That which was unworthy has faded —
that which was good has abided. Faded the

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memory of the tempestuous dike and the riot
ous kalathump ; dimmed the memory of that
society, now happily extinct, but then famous
as " The Nippers from Peru " ; forgotten even
the glad exultation of those days when the
neighboring mountaineer in the pride of his
breezy heights brought down the bandaged bear
to give battle to the urban dog. Forgotten all
those follies, and, let us hope, forgiven. But,
enduring in heart and in brain, the exhaustless
splendor of those golden days — the deep and
pure inspiration of these academic shades, the
kindly admonition and wisdom of the masters,
the generous ardor of our mimic contests, and
that loving comradeship that laughed at separa
tion and has lived beyond the grave. Enduring
and hallowed, blessed be God, the strange and
wild ambitions that startled my boyish heart as
amid these dim corridors, oh ! my mother, the
stirring of unseen wings in thy mighty past
caught my careless ear, and the dazzling ideals
of thy future were revealed to my wondering
sight.

Gentlemen of the literary societies, I have no
studied oration for you to-day. A life busy
beyond its capacities has given scanty time for
preparation, but from a loving heart I shall
speak to you this morning in comradely sympathy
of that which concerns us nearly.

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

Will you allow me to say that the anxiety that
always possesses me when I address my young
countrymen is to-day quickened to the point of
consecration ? For the first time in man's respon
sibility I speak in Virginia to Virginia. Beyond
its ancient glories that made it matchless among
States, its later martyrdom has made it the
Mecca of my people. It was on these hills that
our fathers gave new and deeper meaning to
heroism, and advanced the world in honor ! It is
in these valleys that our dead lie sleeping. Out
there is Appomattox, where on every ragged gray
cap the Lord God Almighty laid the sword of His
imperishable knighthood. Beyond is Petersburg,
where he whose name I bear, and who was prince
to me among men, dropped his stainless sword and
yielded up his stainless life. Dear to me, sir, are the
people among whom my father died — sacred to
me, sir, the soil that drank his precious blood.
From a heart stirred by these emotions and sobered
by these memories, let me speak to you to-day, my
countrymen, and God give me wisdom to speak
aright and the words wherewithal to challenge
and hold your attention.

We are standing in the daybreak of the second
century of this Republic. The fixed stars are
fading from the sky, and we grope in uncertain
light. Strange shapes have come with the night.
Established ways are lost — new roads perplex,

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AGAINST CENTRALIZATION

and widening fields stretch beyond the sight.
The unrest of dawn impels us to and fro — but
Doubt stalks amid the confusion, and even on the
beaten paths the shifting crowds are halted, and
from the shadows the sentries cry, " Who comes
there ? " In the obscurity of the morning tre
mendous forces are at work. Nothing is stead
fast or approved. The miracles of the present
belie the simple truths of the past. The Church
is besieged from without and betrayed from
within. Behind the courts smolders the rioter's
torch and looms the gibbet of the anarchists.
Government is the contention of partisans and
the prey of spoilsmen. Trade is restless in the
grasp of monopoly, and commerce shackled with
limitation. The cities are swollen and the fields
are stripped. Splendor streams from the castle,
and squalor crouches in the home. The universal
brotherhood is dissolving, and the people are
huddling into classes. The hiss of the Nihilist
disturbs the covert, and the roar of the mob
murmurs along the highway. Amid it all
beats the great American heart undismayed,
and standing fast by the challenge of his con
science, the citizen of the Republic, tranquil and
resolute, notes the drifting of the spectral cur
rents, and calmly awaits the full disclosures of
the day.

Who shall be the heralds of this coming day ?
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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

Who shall thread the way of honor and safety
through these besetting problems ? Who shall
rally the people to the defense of their liberties
and stir them until they shall cry aloud to be
led against the enemies of the Republic? You,
my countrymen, you ! The university is the
training camp of the future, the scholar the
champion of the coming years. Napoleon over
ran Europe with drum tap and bivouac — the
next Napoleon shall form his battalions at the
tap of the school-house bell, and his captains shall
come with cap and gown. Waterloo was won
at Oxford — Sedan at Berlin. So Germany
plants her colleges in the shadow of the French
forts, and the professor smiles amid his students
as he notes the sentinel stalking against the sky.
The farmer has learned that brains mix better
with his soil than the waste of sea birds, and the
professor walks by his side as he spreads the
showers in the verdure of his fields, and locks
the sunshine in the glory of his harvest. A
button is pressed by a child's finger, and the
work of a million men is done. The hand is
nothing — the brain everything. Physical prow
ess has had its day, and the age of reason has
come. The lion-hearted Richard challenging
Saladin to single combat is absurd, for even Gog
and Magog shall wage the Armageddon from
their closets and look not upon the blood that

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AGAINST CENTRALIZATION

runs to the bridle bit. Science is everything !
She butchers a hog in Chicago, draws Boston
within five hours of New York, renews the
famished soil, routs her viewless bondsmen
from the electric center of the earth, and then
turns to watch the new Icarus as, mounting in
his flight to the sun, he darkens the burnished ceil
ing of the sky with the shadow of his wing.

Learning is supreme, and you are its prophets.
Here the Olympic games of the Republic, and
you its chosen athletes. It is yours, then, to
grapple with these problems, to confront and
master these dangers. Yours to decide whether
the tremendous forces of this Republic shall be kept
in balance, or whether, unbalanced, they shall bring
chaos ; whether 60,000,000 men are capable of self-
government, or whether, liberty shall be lost to them
who would give their lives to maintain it. Your
responsibility is appalling. You stand in the
pass behind which the world's liberties are
guarded. This government carries the hopes of
the human race. Blot out the beacon that lights
the portals of this Republic, and the world is
adrift again. But save the Republic ; establish
the light of its beacon over the troubled waters,
and one by one the nations of the earth shall drop
anchor and be at rest in the harbor of universal
liberty. Let one who loves his Republic as he loves
his life, and whose heart is thrilled with the ma j esty

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of its mission, speak to you now of the dangers
that threaten its peace and prosperity, and the
means by which they may be honorably averted.

The unmistakable danger that threatens free
government in America is the increasing tend
ency to concentrate in the Federal government
powers and privileges that should be left with
the States, and to create powers that neither the
State nor Federal government should have. Let
it be understood at once that in discussing this
question I seek to revive no dead issue. We
know precisely what was put to the issue of the
sword, and what was settled thereby. The right
of a State to leave this Union was denied, and
the denial made good forever. But the sover
eignty of the States in the Union was never in
volved, and the Republic that survived the storm
was, in the words of the Supreme Court, "an
indissoluble Union of indestructible States."
Let us stand on this decree and turn our faces to
the future !

It is not strange that there should be a tend
ency to centralization in our government. This
disposition was the legacy of the war. Steam
and electricity have emphasized it by bringing
the people closer together. The splendor of a
central government dazzles the unthinking; its
opulence tempts the poor and the avaricious ; its
strength assures the rich and the timid ; its pat-

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ronage incites the spoilsmen and its powers in
flame the partisan.

And so we have paternalism run mad. The
merchant asks the government to control the
arteries of trade, the manufacturer asks that his
product be protected, the rich ask for an army,
and the unfortunate for help — this man for
schools and that for subsidy. The partisan pro
claims, amid the clamor, that the source of largess
must be the seat of power, and demands that
the ballot boxes of the States be hedged by Fed
eral bayonets. The centrifugal force of our sys
tem is weakened, centripetal force is increased,
and the revolving spheres are veering inward
from their orbits. There are strong men who
rejoice in this unbalancing, and deliberately con
tend that the center is the true repository of power
and source of privilege — men who, were they
charged with the solar system, would shred the
planets into the sun, and, exulting in the sudden
splendor, little reck that they had kindled the
conflagration that presages universal nights !
Thus the States are dwarfed and the Nation
magnified — and to govern a people who can
best govern themselves, the central authority is
made stronger and more splendid !

Concurrent with this political drift is another
movement, less formal perhaps, but not less dan
gerous — the consolidation of capital. I hesitate

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

to discuss this phase of the subject, for of all
men I despise most cordially the demagogue who
panders to the prejudice of the poor by abuse of
the rich. But no man can note the encroachment
in this country of what may be called " the
money power" on the rights of the individual,
without feeling that the time is approaching
when the issue between plutocracy and the
people will be forced to trial. The world has
not seen, nor has the mind of man conceived, of
such miraculous wealth gathering as are every
day tales to us. Aladdin's lamp is dimmed, and
Monte Cristo becomes commonplace when com
pared to our magicians of finance and trade.
The seeds of a luxury that even now surpasses
that of Rome or Corinth, and has only yet put
forth its first flowers, are sown in this simple
Republic. What shall the full fruitage be ? I do
not denounce the newly rich. For most part
their money came under forms of law. The ir
responsibilities of sudden wealth is in many
cases steadied by that resolute good sense which
seems to be an American heritage, and underrun
by careless prodigality or by constant charity.
Our great wealth has brought us profit and
splendor. But the status itself is a menace.
A home that costs 13,000,000 and a breakfast that
costs $5000 are disquieting facts to the millions
who live in a hut and dine on a crust. The fact

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AGAINST CENTRALIZATION

that a man ten years from poverty has an income
of $20,000,000 — and his two associates nearly as
much — from the control and arbitrary pricing
of an article of universal use, falls strangely on
the ears of those who hear it, as they sit empty-
handed, while children cry for bread. The tend
ency deepens the dangers suggested by the status.
What is to be the end of this swift piling up
of wealth ? Twenty years ago but few cities
had their millionaires. To-day almost every
town has its dozen. Twenty men can be named
who can each buy a sovereign State at its tax-
book value. The youngest nation, America, is
vastly the richest, and in twenty years, in spite
of war, has nearly trebled her wealth. Millions
are made on the turn of a trade, and the toppling
mass grows and grows, while in its shadow
starvation and despair stalk among the people,
and swarm with increasing legions against the
citadels of human life.

But the abuse of this amazing power of consoli
dated wealth is its bitterest result and its press
ing danger. When the agent of a dozen men,
who have captured and control an article of prime
necessity, meets the representatives of a million
farmers from whom they have forced $3,000,000
the year before, with no more moral right than
is behind the highwayman who halts the traveler
at his pistol's point, and insolently gives them

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

the measure of this year's rapacity, and tells them
— men who live in the sweat of their brows, and
stand between God and Nature — that they must
submit to the infamy because they are helpless,
then the first fruits of this system are gathered
and have turned to ashes on the lips. When a
dozen men get together in the morning and fix
the price of a dozen articles of common use —
with no standard but their arbitrary will, and
no limit but their greed or daring — and then
notify the sovereign people of this free Republic
how much, in the mercy of their masters, they
shall pay for the necessaries of life — then the
point of intolerable shame has been reached.

We have read of the robber barons of the Rhine
who from their castles sent a shot across the bow
of every passing craft, and descending as hawks
from the crags, tore and robbed and plundered
the voyagers until their greed was glutted or
the strength of their victims spent. Shall this
shame of Europe against which the world revolted,
shall it be repeated in this free country ? And
yet, when a syndicate or a trust can arbitrarily
add 25 per cent to the cost of a single article
of common use, and safely gather forced tribute
from the people, until from its surplus it could
buy every castle on the Rhine, or requite every
baron's debauchery from its kitchen account —
where is the difference — save that the castle is

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AGAINST CENTRALIZATION

changed to a broker's office, and the picturesque
river to the teeming streets and the broad fields
of this government " of the people, by the people,
and for the people " ? I do not overstate the
case. Economists have held that wheat, grown
everywhere, could never be cornered by capital.
And yet one man in Chicago tied the wheat crop
in his handkerchief, and held it until a sewing-
woman in my city, working for ninety cents a
week, had to pay him twenty cents tax on the
sack of flour she bore home in her famished
hands. Three men held the cotton crop until the
English spindles were stopped and the lights
went out in 3,000,000 English homes. Last sum
mer one man cornered pork until he had levied
a tax of $3 per^ barrel on every consumer, and
pocketed a profit of millions. The Czar of Russia
would not have dared to do these things. And
yet they are no secrets in this free government
of ours ! They are known of all men, and, my
countrymen, no argument can follow them, and
no plea excuse them, when they fall on the men
who, toiling, yet suffer, — who hunger at their
work, — and who cannot find food for their wives
with which to feed the infants that hang famish
ing at their breasts. Mr. Jefferson foresaw this
danger, and he sought to avert it. When Virginia
ceded the vast Northwest to the government, —
before the Constitution was written, — Mr. Jeffer-

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son in the second clause of the articles of cession
prohibited forever the right of primogeniture.
Virginia then nobly said, and Georgia in the ces
sion of her territory repeated, " In granting this
domain to the government and dedicating it to
freedom, we prescribe that there shall be no classes
in the family, — no child set up at the expense of
the others, no feudal estates established, — but
what a man hath shall be divided equally among
his children."

We see this feudal tendency, swept away by
Mr. Jefferson, revived by the conditions of our
time, aided by the government with its grant of
enormous powers and its amazing class legislation.
It has given the corporation more power than
Mr. Jefferson stripped from the individual, and
has set up a creature without soul or conscience
or limit of human life to establish an oligarchy,
unrelieved by human charity and unsteadied by
human responsibility. The syndicate, the trust,
the corporation, — these are the eldest sons of the
Republic for whom the feudal right of primo
geniture is revived, and who inherit its estate to
the impoverishment of their brothers. Let it be
noted that the alliance between those who would
centralize the government and the consolidated
money power is not only close, but essential. The
one is the necessity of the other. Establish the
money 'power and there is universal clamor for

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AGAINST CENTRALIZATION

strong government. The weak will demand it
for protection against the people restless under
oppression — the patriotic for protection against
the plutocracy that scourges and robs — the cor
rupt hoping to buy of one central body distant
from local influences what they could not buy
from the legislatures of the States sitting at their
homes — the oligarchs will demand it — as the
privileged few have always demanded it — for
the protection of their privileges and the perpetu
ity of their bounty. Thus, hand in hand, will
walk — as they have always walked — the fed
eralist and the capitalist, the centralist and the
monopolist — the strong government protecting
the money power, and the money power the
political standing army of the government.
Hand in hand, compact and organized, one creat
ing the necessity, the other meeting it ; consoli
dated wealth and centralizing government ; strip
ping the many of their rights and aggrandizing
the few ; distrusting the people, but in touch
with the plutocrats ; striking down local self-
government and dwarfing the citizens — and at
last confronting the people in the market, in the
courts, at the ballot box — everywhere — with
the infamous challenge, "What are you going
to do about it?" And so the government pro
tects and the barons oppress, and the people suf
fer and grow strong. And when the battle for

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

liberty is joined — the centralist and the pluto
crat, intrenched behind the deepening powers of
the government, arid the countless ramparts of
money bags, oppose to the vague but earnest on
set of the people the power of the trained pha
lanx and the conscienceless strength of the
mercenary.

Against this tendency who shall protest?
Those who believe that a central government
means a strong government, and a strong govern
ment means repression — those who believe that
this vast Republic, with its diverse interest and
its local needs, can better be governed by liberty
and enlightenment diffused among the people
than by powers and privileges congested at the
center — those who believe that the States should
do nothing that the people can do themselves and
the government nothing that the States and the
people can do — those who believe that the wealth
of the central government' is a crime rather than
a virtue, and that every dollar not needed for its
economical administration should be left with
the people of the State — those who believe that
the hearthstone of the home is the true altar of
liberty and the enlightened conscience of the cit
izen the best guarantee of government ! Those
of you who note the farmer sending his sons
to the city that they may escape the unequal bur
dens under which he has labored, thus diminish-

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AGAINST CENTRALIZATION

ing the rural population whose leisure, integrity,
and deliberation have corrected the passion and
impulse and corruption of the cities — who note
that while the rich are growing richer, and the
poor poorer, we are lessening that great middle
class that, ever since it met the returning crusad
ers in England with the demand that the hut of
the humble should be as sacred as the castle of
the great, has been the bulwark and glory of
every English-speaking community — who know
that this Republic, which we shall live to see
with 150,000,000 people, stretching from ocean to
ocean, and almost from the arctic to the torrid
zone, cannot be governed by any laws that a
central despotism could devise or controlled by
any armies it could marshal, — you who know
these things protest with all the earnestness of
your souls against the policy and the methods
that make them possible.

What is the remedy ? To exalt the hearth
stone, to strengthen the home, to build up the
individual, to magnify and defend the principle
of local self-government. Not in deprecation of
the Federal government, but to its glory; not to
weaken the Republic, but to strengthen it ; not
to check the rich blood that flows to its heart,
but to send it full and wholesome from healthy
members rather than from withered and diseased
extremities.

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

The man who kindles the fire on the hearth
stone of an honest and righteous home burns the
best incense to liberty. He does not love man
kind less who loves his neighbor most. George
Eliot has said : —

" A human life should be well rooted in some spot of a
native land where it may get the love of tender kinship
for the face of the earth, for the sounds and accents that
haunt it, a spot where the definiteness of early memories
may be inwrought with affection, and spread, not by
sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of
the blest."

The germ of the best patriotism is in the love
that a man has for the home he inhabits, for the
soil he tills, for the trees that give him shade,
and the hills that stand in his pathway. I teach
my son to love Georgia, to love the soil that he
stands on, — the body of my old mother, the
mountains that are her springing breasts, the
broad acres that hold her substance, the dimpling
valleys in which her beauty rests, the forests that
sing her songs of lullaby and of praise, and the
brooks that run with her rippling laughter. The
love of home — deep rooted and abiding — that
blurs the eyes of the dying soldier with the vision
of an old homestead amid green fields and cluster
ing trees, that follows the busy man through the
clamoring world, persistent though put aside,
and at last draws his tired feet from the high-

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way and leads him through shady lanes and well-
remembered paths until, amid the scenes of his
boyhood, he gathers up the broken threads of his
life and owns the soil his conqueror, — this, this
lodged in the heart of the citizen is the saving
principle of our government. We note the
barracks of our standing army with its rolling
drum and its fluttering flag as points of strength
and protection. But the citizen standing in the
doorway of his home — contented on his thresh
old — his family gathered about his hearthstone
— while the evening of a well-spent day closes
in scenes and sounds that are dearest, — he shall
save the Republic when the drum tap is futile
and the barracks are exhausted.

This love shall not be pent up or provincial.
The home should be consecrated to humanity,
and from its roof-tree should fly the flag of the
Republic. Every simple fruit gathered there —
every sacrifice endured, and every victory won
should bring better joy and inspiration in the
knowledge that it will deepen the glory of our
Republic and widen the harvest of humanity !
Be not like the peasant of France who hates the
Paris he cannot comprehend, but emulate the
example of your fathers in the South, who, hold
ing to the sovereignty of the States, yet gave to
the Republic its chief glory of statesmanship,
and under Jackson at New Orleans, and Taylor

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and Scott in Mexico, saved it twice from the
storm of war. Inherit without fear or shame
the principle of local self-government by which
your fathers stood ! For though entangled with
an institution foreign to this soil, which, thank
God, not planted by their hands, is now swept
away, and with a theory bravely defended, but
now happily adjusted, — that principle holds the
imperishable truth that shall yet save this Re
public. The integrity of the State, its rights and
its powers, — these, maintained with firmness,
but in loyalty, — these shall yet, by lodging the
option of local affairs in each locality, meet the
needs of this vast and complex government, and
check the headlong rush to that despotism that
reason could not defend, nor the armies of the
Czar maintain, among a free and enlightened
people. This issue is squarely made ! It is
centralized government and the money power on
the one hand, against the integrity of the States
and rights of the people on the other. At all
hazard, stand with the people and the threatened
States. The choice may not be easily made.
Wise men may hesitate and patriotic men divide.
The culture, the strength, the mightiness, of the
rich and strong government, — these will tempt
and dazzle. But be not misled. Beneath this
splendor is the canker of a disturbed and op-
pressed people. It was from the golden age of

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Augustus that the Roman Empire staggered to its
fall. The integrity of the States and the rights
of the people ! Stand there — there is safety —
there is the broad and enduring brotherhood —
there, less of glory, but more of honor ! Put
patriotism above partisanship, and wherever
the principle that protects the States against the
centralists, and the people against the plutocrats,
may lead, follow without fear or faltering, for
there the way of duty and of wisdom lies !

Exalt the citizen. As the State is the unit of
government, he is the unit of the State. Teach
him that his home is his castle, and his sover
eignty rests beneath his hat. Make himself self-
respecting, self-reliant, and responsible. Let him
lean on the State for nothing that his own arm
can do, and on the government for nothing that
his State can do. Let him cultivate independ
ence to the point of sacrifice, and learn that
humble things with unbartered liberty are better
than splendors bought with its price. Let him
neither surrender his individuality to govern
ment, nor merge it with the mob. Let him
stand upright and fearless — a freeman born of
freemen, sturdy in his own strength, dowering
his family in the sweat of his brow, loving to his
State, loyal to his Republic, earnest in his al
legiance wherever it rests, but building his altar
in the midst of his household gods and shrining

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in his own heart the uttermost temple of its
liberty.

Go out, determined to magnify the commu
nity in which your lot is cast. Cultivate its
small economies. Stand by its young indus
tries. Commercial dependence is a chain that
galls every day. A factory built at home, a
book published, a shoe or a book made, — these
are steps in that diffusion of thought and inter
est that is needed. Teach your neighbors to
withdraw from the vassalage of distant capital
ists, and pay, under any sacrifice, the mortgage
on the home or the land. By simple and prudent
lives stay within your own resources, and estab
lish the freedom of your community. Make
every village and crossroads as far as may be
sovereign to its own wants. Learn that thriv
ing countrysides with room for limbs, conscience,
and liberty are better than great cities with
congested wealth and population. Preserve the
straight and simple homogeneity of our people.
Welcome emigrants, but see that they come as
friends and neighbors, to mingle their blood with
ours, to build their houses in our fields, and to
plant their Christian faith on our hills, and
honoring our Constitution and reverencing our
God, to confirm the simple beliefs in which we
have been reared, and which we should transmit
unsullied to our children. Stand by these old-

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fashioned beliefs. Science hath revealed no bet
ter faith than that you learned at your mother's
knee — nor has knowledge made a wiser and
a better book than the worn old Bible that,
thumbed by hands long since still, and blurred
with the tears of eyes long since closed, held the
simple annals of your family and the heart and
conscience of your homes.

Honor and emulate the virtues and the faith
of your forefathers — who, learned, were never
wise above a knowledge of God and His gospel
— who, great, were never exalted above an hum
ble trust in God and His mercy !

Let me sum up what I have sought to say in
this hurried address. Your Republic, on the
glory of which depends all that men hold dear,
is menaced with great dangers. Against these
dangers defend her, as you would defend the most
precious concerns of your own life. Against the
dangers of centralizing all political powers, put the
approved and imperishable principle of local self-
government. Between the rich and the poor now
drifting into separate camps, build up the great
middle class that, neither drunk with wealth, nor
embittered by poverty, shall lift up the suffering
and control the strong. To the jangling of races
and creeds that threaten the courts of men and
the temples of God, oppose the home and the
citizen — a homogeneous and honest people —

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and the simple faith that sustained your fathers
and mothers in their stainless lives and led them
serene and smiling into the valley of the shadow.
Let it be understood in my parting words to
you that I am no pessimist as to this Repub
lic. I always bet on sunshine in America. I
know that my country has reached the point
of perilous greatness, and that strange forces not
to be measured or comprehended are hurrying
her to heights that dazzle and blind all mortal
eyes — but I know that beyond the uttermost
glory is enthroned the Lord God Almighty, and
that when the hour of her trial has come, He
will lift up His everlasting gates and bend down
above her in mercy and in love. For with her
He has surely lodged the ark of His covenant
with the sons of men. Emerson wisely said,
" Our whole history looks like the last effort by
Divine Providence in behalf of the human race."
And the Republic will endure. Centralism will
be checked, and liberty saved — plutocracy over
thrown and equality restored. The struggle for
human rights never goes backward among Eng
lish-speaking peoples. Our brothers across the
sea have fought from despotism to liberty, and in
the wisdom of local self-government have planted
colonies around the world. This very day Mr.
Gladstone, the wisest man that has lived since
your Jefferson died, — with the light of another

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world beating in his face until he seems to have
caught the wisdom of the Infinite and towers
half human and half divine from his eminence,
— this man, turning away from the traditions of
his life, begs his countrymen to strip the crown
of its last usurped authority, and lodge it with
the people, where it belongs. The trend of the
times is with us. The world moves steadily from
gloom to brightness. And bending down hum
bly as Elisha did, and praying that my eyes shall
be made to see, I catch the vision of this Repub
lic, its mighty forces in balance, and its unspeak
able glory falling on all its children, chief among
the federation of English-speaking people, plenty
streaming from its borders and light from its
mountain tops, working out its mission under
God's approving eye, until the dark continents
are opened and the highways of earth estab
lished and the shadows lifted, and the jargon
of the nations stilled and the perplexities of
Babel straightened — and under one language,
one liberty, and one God, all the nations of the
world hearkening to the American drum beat
and girding up their loins, shall march amid the
breaking of the millennial dawn into the paths
of righteousness and of peace !

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THE FARMER AND THE CITIES

A speech delivered at Elberton, Georgia, in June, 1889

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen : For
the first time in my life I address an audience
in the open air. And as I stand here in this
beautiful morning, so shot through and through
with sunshine that the very air is as molten
gold to the touch ; under these trees in whose
trunks the rains and suns of years are compacted,
and on whose leaves God has laid His whisper
ing music ; here in His majestic temple, with
the brightness of His smile breaking all about
us ; standing above the soil instinct with the
touch of His life-giving hand, and full of His
promise and His miracle ; and looking up to the
clouds through which His thunders roll, and
His lightnings cut their way, and beyond that to
the dazzling glory of the sun, and yet beyond to
the unspeakable splendor of the universe, flash
ing and paling until the separate stars are but as
mist in the skies, even to the uplifted jasper gates
through which His everlasting glory streams —
my mind falls back abashed, and I realize how
paltry is human speech, and how idle are the
thoughts of men !

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THE FARMER AND THE CITIES

Another thought oppresses me. In front of
me sit several thousand people. Over there, in
smelling distance, where we can almost hear the
lisping of the mop as it caresses the barbecued
lamb or the pottering of the skewered pig as he
leisurely turns from fat to crackling, is being
prepared a dinner that I verily believe covers
more provisions than were issued to all the
soldiers of Lee's army, God bless them, in their
last campaign. And I shudder when I think
that I, a single, unarmed, defenseless man, is all
that stands between this crowd and that dinner.
Here then, awed by God's majesty, and menaced
by man's appetite, I am tempted to leave this
platform and yield to the boyish impulses that
always stir in my heart amid such scenes, and
revert to the days of boyhood when about the
hills of Athens I chased the pacing coon, or
twisted the unwary rabbit, or shot my ramrod
at all manner of birds and beasts — and at night
went home to look up into a pair of gentle eyes
and take on my tired face the benediction of a
mother's kiss and feel on my weary head a pair
of loving hands, now wrinkled and trembling, but,
blessed be God, fairer to me yet than the hands
of mortal women, and stronger yet to lead me
than the hands of mortal man, as they laid a
mother's blessing there, while bending at her
knees I made my best confession of faith and

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worshiped at the truest altar I have yet found
in this world. I had rather go out and lay
down on the ground and hug the grass to my
breast and mind me of the time when I builded
boyish ambitions on the wooded hills of Athens,
than do aught else to-day. But I recall the
story of Uncle Remus, who, when his favorite
hero, Brer Rabbit, was sorely pressed by that
arch villain, Brer Fox, said : —

" An' Brer Rabbit den he climb'd a tree."
" But," said the little boy, " Uncle Remus, a
rabbit can't climb a tree."

" Doan you min' dat, honey. Brer Fox pressed
dis rabbit so hard he des bleeged to dim* a
tree."

I am pressed so hard to-day by your com
mands that I am just "bleeged" to make a
speech, and so I proceed. I heartily invoke
God's guidance in what I say, that I shall utter
no word to soil this temple of His, and no senti
ment not approved in His wisdom ; and as for
you, when the time comes — as it will come —
when you prefer barbecued shote to raw orator,
and feel that you can be happier at that table
than in this forum, just say the word and I will
be with you heart and soul !

I am tempted to yield to the gayety of this
scene, to the flaunting banners of the trees, the
downpouring sunshine, the garnered plenty over

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there, this smiling and hospitable crowd, and
throwing serious affairs aside, to speak to you to
day as the bird sings — without care and without
thought. I should be false to myself and to you,
if I did, for there are serious problems that beset
our State and our country that no man, facing,
as I do this morning, a great and intelligent
audience, can in honor or in courage disregard.
I shall attempt to make no brilliant speech, but
to counsel with you in plain and simple words,
beseeching your attention and your sympathy as
to the dangers of the present hour, and our
duties arid our responsibilities.

At Saturday noon in any part of this country
you may note the farmer going from his field,-
eating his dinner thoughtfully, and then saddling
his plow horse, or starting afoot and making
his way to a neighboring church or schoolhouse.
There he finds from every farm, through every
footpath, his neighbors gathering to meet him.
What is the object of this meeting? It is not
social, it is not frolic, it is not a picnic — the ear
nest, thoughtful faces, the serious debate and
council, the closed doors and the secret session,
forbid this assumption. It is a meeting of men
who feel that in spite of themselves their affairs
are going wrong ; of free and equal citizens who
feel that they carry unequal burdens ; of toilers
who feel that they reap not the just fruits of

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their toil ; of men who feel that their labor en
riches others while it leaves them poor, and that
the sweat of their bodies, shed freely under God's
command, goes to clothe the idle and the avari
cious in purple and fine linen. This is a meeting
of protest, of resistance. Here the farmer meets
to demand, and organize that he may enforce his
demand, that he shall stand equal with every
other class of citizens ; that laws discriminating
against him shall be repealed ; that the methods
oppressing him shall be modified or abolished ;
and that he shall be guaranteed that neither gov
ernment nor society shall abridge, by statute or
custom, his just and honest proportion of the
wealth he created, but that he shall be permitted
to garner in his barns, and enjoy by his hearth
stone, the full and fair fruits of his labor. If
this movement were confined to Elbert, if this
disturbing feeling of discontent were shut in the
limits of your county lines, it would still demand
the attention of the thoughtful and patriotic.
But, as it is in Elbert, so it is in every county in
Georgia — as in Georgia, so it is in every State in
the South — as in the South, so in every agricul
tural State in the Union. In every rural neigh
borhood, from Ohio to Texas, from Michigan to
Georgia, the farmers, riding thoughtful through
field and meadow, seek ten thousand schoolhouses
or churches — the muster grounds of this new

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army — and there, recounting their wrongs and
renewing their pledges, send up from neighbor
hoods to county, from county to State, and State
to Republic, the measure of their strength and
the unyielding quality of their determination.
The agricultural army of the Republic is in mo
tion. The rallying drumbeat has rolled over field
and meadow, and from where the wheat locks
the sunshine in its bearded sheaf, and the clover
carpets the earth, and the cotton whitens beneath
the stars, and the tobacco catches the quick
aroma of the rains, — everywhere that patient
man stands above the soil, or bends about the
furrow, the farmers are ready in squads and com
panies and battalions and legions to be led against
what they hold to be an oppression that honest
men would not deserve, and that brave men
would not endure. Let us not fail to comprehend
the magnitude and the meaning of this move
ment. It is no trifling cause that brings the
farmers into such determined and widespread or
ganization as this. It is not the skillful arts of
the demagogue that has brought nearly two mil
lion farmers into this perfect and pledge-bound so
ciety, but it is a deep and abiding conviction that,
in political and commercial economy of the day, he
is put at a disadvantage that keeps him poor while
other classes grow rich, and that bars his way
to prosperity and independence. General Toombs

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once said that the farmer, considered the most
conservative type of citizenship, is really the most
revolutionary ; that the farmers of France, flock
ing to the towns and cities from the unequal bur
dens of their farms, brought about the French
Revolution, and that about once in every century
the French peasant raided the towns. Three
times the farmers of England have captured and
held London. It was the farmers of Mecklen
burg that made the first American declaration,
and Putman left his plow standing in the furrow
as he hurried to lead the embattled farmers who
fought at Concord and Lexington. I realize it is
impossible that revolution should be the outcome
of our industrial troubles. The farmer of to-day
does not consider that remedy for his wrongs.
I quote history to show that the farmer, segre
gated and deliberate, does not move on slight
provocation, but organizes only under deep con
viction, and that when once organized and
convinced, he is terribly in earnest, and is not
going to rest until his wrongs are righted.

Now, here we are confronted with the most
thorough and widespread agricultural movement
of this or any other day. It is the duty alike of
farmers and those who stand in other ranks, to
get together and consult as to what is the real
status and what is the patriotic duty. Not in
sullenness, but in frankness. Not as opponents,

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but as friends — not as enemies, but as brothers
begotten of a common mother, banded in com
mon allegiance, and marching to a common
destiny. It will not do to say that this organi
zation will pass away, for if the discontent on
which it is based survives it, it had better have
lived and forced its wrongs to final issue. There
is no room for divided hearts in this State, or in
this Republic. If we shall restore Georgia to
her former greatness and prosperity — if we
shall solve the problems that beset the South in
honor and safety — if we shall save this Republic
from the dangers that threaten it — it will re
quire the earnest and united effort of every pa
triotic citizen, be he farmer, or merchant, or
lawyer, or manufacturer. Let us consider, then,
the situation, and decide what is the duty that
lies before us.

In discussing this matter briefly, I beg the
ladies to give me their attention. I have always
believed that there are few affairs of life in
which woman should not have a part. Not
obtrusive part — for that is unwomanly. The
work falling best to the hand of woman is such
work as is done by the dews of night, that ride
not on the boasting wind, and shine not in the
garish sun, but that come when the wind is
stilled and the sun is gone, and night has
wrapped the earth in its sacred "hiish, and fall

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from the distillery of the stars upon the parched
and waiting flowers, as a benediction from God.
Let no one doubt the power of this work,
though it lack pomp and circumstance. Is Bis
marck the mightiest power of this earth, who is
attended by martial strains when he walks
abroad, and in whose path thrones are scattered
as trophies ? Why, the little housewife alone in
her chimney corner, musing in her happiness,
with no trophy in her path save her husband's
loving heart, and no music on her ear save the
chirping of the cricket beneath her hearthstone,
is his superior. For, while he holds the purse-
strings of Germany, she holds the heartstrings
of men. She who rocks the cradle rules the
world. Give me, then, your attention, note the
conflict that is gathering about us, and take
your place with seeming modesty in the ranks
of those who fight for right. It is not an ab
stract political theory that is involved in the
contest of which I speak. It is the integrity
and independence of your home that is at stake.
The battle is not pitched in a distant State.
Your home is the battlefield, and by your
hearthstones you shall fight for your household
gods. With your husband's arms so wound
around you that you can feel his anxious heart
beating against your cheek, with your sons,
sturdy and loving, holding your old hands in

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theirs, here on the threshold of your house, under
the trees that sheltered your babyhood, with the
graves of your dead in that plain inclosure yon
der — here men and women, heart to heart, with
not a man dismayed, not a woman idle — while
the multiplied wolves of debt and mortgage,
and trust and monopoly, swarm from every
thicket ; here we must fight the ultimate battle
for the independence of our people and the hap
piness of our homes.

Now let us look at the facts : First, the nota
ble movement of the population in America is
from the country to the cities. In 1840 — a
generation ago, only one twelfth of the American
people lived in cities of more than 8000 people.
In 1850, one eighth ; in 1860, one sixth ; in 1870,
one fifth; in 1880, one fourth. In the past half-
century the population of cities has increased
more than four times as rapidly as that of the
country. Mind you, when I say that the city
population has increased in one generation from
8 per cent to 25 per cent in population, I mean
the population of cities of more than 8000 people.
There is not such a city in this congressional
district. It is the village and town population,
as well as that of the farms, that goes to swell
so enormously the population of the great cities.
Thus we see diminishing with amazing rapidity
that rural population that is the strength and

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the safety of the people — slow to anger and
thus a safeguard, but terrible in its wrath, and
thus a tremendous corrective power. No greater
calamity could befall any country than the sac
rifice of its town and village and country life.
I rejoice in Atlanta's growth, and yet I wonder
whether it is worth what it cost when I know
that her population has been drawn largely from
rural Georgia, and that back of her grandeur are
thousands of deserted farms and dismantled
homes. As much as I love her — and she is all
to me that home can be to any man — if I had
the disposal of 100,000 immigrants at her gates
to-morrow, 5000 should enter there, 75,000 should
be located in the shops and factories in Georgia
towns and villages, and 20,000 sent to her farms.
It saddens me to see a bright young fellow come
to my office from village or country, and I shud
der when I think for what a feverish and specu
lative and uncertain life he has bartered his rural
birthright, and surrendered the deliberation and
tranquillity of his life on the farm. It is just
that deliberate life that this country needs, for
the fever of the cities is already affecting its sys
tem. Character, like corn, is dug from the soil.
A contented rural population is not only the
measure of our strength, and an assurance of its
peace when there should be peace, and a resource
of courage when peace would be cowardice —

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but it is the nursery of the great leaders who
have made this country what it is. Washington
was born and lived in the country. Jefferson was
a farmer. Henry Clay rode his horse to the mill
in the slashes. Webster dreamed amid the soli
tude of Marshfield. Lincoln was a rail splitter.
Our own Hill walked between the handles of
the plow. Brown peddled barefoot the product
of his patch. Stephens found immortality under
the trees of his country home. Toombs and
Cobb and Calhoun were country gentlemen, and
afar from the cities' maddening strife established
that greatness that is the heritage of their people.
The cities produce very few leaders. Almost
every man in our history formed his character in
the leisure and deliberation of village or coun
try life, and drew his strength from the drugs of
the earth even as a child draws his from his
mother's breast. In the diminution of this
rural population, virtuous and competent, patri
otic and honest, living beneath its own roof-tree,
building its altars by its own hearthstone and
shrining in its own heart its liberty and its
conscience, there is abiding cause for regret.
In the corresponding growth of our cities —
already center spots of danger, with their idle
classes, their sharp rich and poor, their corrupt
politics, their consorted thieves, and their clubs
and societies of anarchy and socialism — I see a

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pressing and impending danger. Let it be noted
that the professions are crowded, that middlemen
are multiplied beyond reason, that the factories
can in six months supply the demand of twelve,
that machinery is constantly taking the place of
men, that labor in every department bids against
itself until it is mercilessly in the hands of the
employer, that the newcomers are largely re
cruits of the idle and dangerous classes, and we
can appreciate something of the danger that
comes with this increasing movement to strip
the villages and the farms and send an increasing
volume into the already overcrowded cities.
This is but one phase of that tendency to central
ization and congestion which is threatening the
liberties of this people and the life of this
Republic.

Now, let us go one step further. What is the
most notable financial movement in America ?
It is the mortgaging of the farm lands of the
country — the bringing of the farmer into bond
age to the money lender. In Illinois the farms
are mortgaged for $200,000,000, in Iowa for
$140,000,000, in Kansas for $160,000,000, and so
on through the Northwest. In Georgia about
$20,000,000 of foreign capital holds in mort
gage perhaps one-fourth of Georgia's farms, and
the work is but started. Every town has its
loan agent — a dozen companies are quartered in

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THE FARMER AND THE CITIES

Atlanta, and the work goes briskly on. A
mortgage is the bulldog of obligations — a
very mud turtle for holding on. It is the heavi
est thing of its weight in the world. I had
one once and sometimes I used to feel, as it rested
on my roof, deadening the rain that fell there,
and absorbing the sunshine, that it would crush
through the shingles and the rafters and over
whelm me with its dull and persistent weight,
and when at last I paid it off, I went out to
look at the shingles to see if it had not flopped
back there of its own accord. Think of it —
Iowa strips from her farmers 114,000,000 of in
terest every year, and sends it to New York and
Boston to be reloaned on farms in other states,
and to support and establish the dominion of
the money lenders over the people. Georgia
gathers from the languishing field $2,000,000
of interest every year, and sends it away for
ever. Could her farmers but keep it at home,
one year's interest would build factories to supply
at cost every yard of bagging and every pound
of guano the farmers need, establish her exchanges
and their warehouses, and have left more than
a million dollars for the improvement of their
farmers and their homes. And year after year
this drain not only continues, but deepens.
What will be the end ? Ireland has found it.
Her peasants in their mud cabins, sending every

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

tithe of their earnings to deepen the purple
luxury of London, where their landlords live,
realize how poor is that country whose farms
are owned in mortgage or fee simple by those
who live beyond its borders. If every Irish
landlord lived on his estate, bought of his tenants
the product of their farms, and invested his
rents in Irish industries, this Irish question that
is the shame of the world would be settled with
out legislation or strife. Georgia can never go
to Ireland's degradation, but every Georgia farm
put under mortgage to a foreign capitalist is a
step in that direction,' and every dollar sent out
as interest leaves the State that much poorer.
I do not blame the farmers. It is a miracle that
out of their poverty they have done so well.
I simply deplore the result, and ask you to note
in the millions of acres that annually pass under
mortgage to the money lenders of the East, and
in the thousands of independent country homes
annually surrendered as hostages to their hands,
another evidence of that centralization that is
drinking up the lifeblood of this broad Republic.
Let us go one step further. All protest as to
our industrial condition is met with the state
ment that America is startling the world with
its growth and progress. Is this growth sym
metrical — is this progress shared by every class ?
Let the tax books of Georgia answer. This year,

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THE FARMER AND THE CITIES

for the first time since 1860, our taxable wealth
is equal to that with which, excluding our slaves,
we entered the Civil War — 1368,000,000. There
is cause for rejoicing in this wonderful growth
from the ashes and desolation of twenty years
ago, but the tax books show that while the
towns and cities are 160,000,000 richer than they
were in 1860, the farmers are 150,000,000 poorer.
Who produced this wealth? In 1865, when
our towns and cities were paralyzed, when not a
mine nor quarry was open, hardly a mill or a
factory running ; when we had neither money nor
credit, it was the farmers' cotton that started the
mills of industry and of trade. Since that desolate
year, when, urging his horse down the furrow, plow
ing through fields on which he had staggered amid
the storm of battle, he began the rehabilitation
of Georgia with no friend near him save nature
that smiled at his kindly touch, and God sent
him the message of cheer through the rustling
leaves, he has dug from the soil of Georgia more
than $1,000,000,000 worth of product. From
this mighty resource great cities have been
builded and countless fortunes amassed, but
amid all the splendor he has remained the hewer
of wood and the drawer of water. He had
made the cities 160,000,000 richer than they were
when the war began, and he finds himself, in
the sweat of whose brow this miracle was

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

wrought, $50,000,000 poorer than he then was.
Perhaps not a farmer in this audience knew this
fact — but I doubt if there is one in the audience
who has not felt in his daily life the disadvantage
that in twenty short years has brought about
this stupendous difference. Let the figures speak
for themselves. The farmer — the first figure to
stumble amid the desolate dawn of our new life
and to salute the coming day — hurrying to
market with the harvest of his hasty planting
that Georgia might once more enter the lists of
the living States and but the wherewithal to
still her wants and clothe her nakedness —
always apparently the master of the situation,
has he not been really its slave, when he finds
himself at the end of twenty hard and faithful
years $110,000,000 out of balance ?

Now, let us review the situation for a moment.
I have shown you, first, that the notable drift of
population is to the loss of village and country,
and the undue and dangerous growth of the city ;
second, that the notable movement of finance is
that which is bringing villages and country under
mortgage to the city ; and third, that they who
handle the products for sale profit more thereby
than those who create them — the difference in
one State in twenty years reaching the enormous
sum of $110,000,000. Are these healthy tenden
cies ? Do they not demand the earnest and though t-

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THE FARMER AND THE CITIES

fill consideration of every patriotic citizen ? The
problem of the day is to check these three cur
rents that are already pouring against the bul
warks of our peace and prosperity. To anchor
the farmer to his land and the villager to his
home ; to enable him to till the land under equal
conditions and to hold that home in independence ;
to save with his hands the just proportion of his
labor, that he may sow in content and reap in
justice, — this is what we need. The danger of
the day is centralization, its salvation diffusion.
Cut that word deep in your heart. This Repub
lic differs from Russia only because the powers
centralized there in one man are here diffused
among the people. Western Ohio is happy and
tranquil, while Chicago is feverish and dangerous,
because the people diffused in the towns and the
villages of the one are centralized and packed in
the tenements of the other ; but of all centraliza
tion that menaces our peace and threatens our
liberties, is the consolidation of capital — and of
all the diffusion that is needed in this Republic,
congesting at so many points, is the leveling of
our colossal fortunes and the diffusion of our
gathered wealth amid the great middle classes
of this people. As this question underruns the
three tendencies we have been discussing, let us
consider it a moment.

Few men comprehend the growth of private
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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

fortunes in this country, and the encroachments
they have made on the rest of the people. Take
one instance : A man in Chicago that had a pri
vate fortune secured control of all the wheat
in the country, and advanced the price until
flour went up $3 a barrel. When he collected
$4,000,000 of this forced tribute from the
people, he opened his corner and released the
wheat, and the world, forgetting the famishing
children from whose hungry lips he had stolen
the crust, praised him as the king of finance and
trade. Let us analyze this deal. The farmer
who raised the wheat got not one cent of the
added profit; the mills that ground it not one
cent. Every dollar went to swell the toppling
fortunes of him who never sowed it to the ground,
nor fed it to the thundering wheels, but who
knew it only as the chance instrument of his in
famous scheme. Why, our fathers declared war
against England, their mother country, from
whose womb they came, because she levied two
cents a pound on our tea, and yet, without a
murmur, we submit to ten times this tax placed on
the bread of our mouths, and levied by a private
citizen for no reason save his greed, and no right
save his might. Were a man to enter an humble
home in England, bind the father helpless, stamp
out the fire on the hearthstone, empty the scanty
larder, and leave the family for three weeks cold

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THE FARMER AND THE CITIES

and hungry and helpless, he would be dealt with
by the law ; and yet four men in New York cor
nered the world's cotton crop and held it until
the English spindles were stopped and 14,000,000
operatives sent idle and empty-handed to their
homes, to divide their last crust with their chil
dren, and then sit down and suffer until the greed
of the speculators was filled. The sugar refiner
ies combined their plants at a cost of $14,000,000,
and so raised the price of sugar that they made
the first year $9,500,000 profit, and since then
have advanced it rapidly until we sweeten our
coffee absolutely in their caprice. When the
bagging mills were threatened with a reduced
tariff, they made a trust and openly boasted that
they intended to make one season's profits pay
the entire cost of their mills — and these precious
villains, whom thus far the lightnings have failed
to blast, having carried out their infamous boast,
organized for a deeper steal this season. And so
it goes. There is not a thing we eat or drink,
that may not be thus seized and controlled and
made an instrument for the shameless plundering
of the people. It is a shame — this people patient
and cheerful under the rise or fall of prices that
come with the failure of God's season's charge
as its compensation — or under the advance at
the farm which enriches the farmer, or under that
competitive demand which bespeaks brisk pros-

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perity — this people made the prey and the sport
of plunderers who levy tribute through a system
that mocks at God's recurring rains, knows not
the farmer, and locks competition in the grasp of
monopoly. And the millions, thus wrung from
the people, loaned back to them at usury, laying
the blight of the mortgage on their homes, and
the obligation of debt on their manhood. Talk
about the timidity of capital. That is a forgot
ten phrase. In the power and irresponsibility of
this sudden and enormous wealth is bred an in
solence that knows no bounds. " The public be
damned ! " was the sentiment of the plutocrats,
speaking through the voice of Vanderbilt's mil
lions. In cornering the product and levying the
tribute — in locking up abundant supply until
the wheels of industry stop — in oppressing
through trusts, and domineering in the strength
of corporate power, the plutocrats do what no
political party would dare attempt and what no
government on this earth would enforce. The
Czar of Russia would not dare hold up a product
until the mill wheels were idle, or lay an unusual
tax on bread and meat to replenish his coffers,
and yet these things our plutocrats, flagrant and
irresponsible, do day after day until public indig
nation is indignant and shame is lost in wonder.
And when an outraged people turn to govern
ment for help, what do they find ? Their govern-

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THE FARMER AND THE CITIES

ment in the hands of a party that is in sympathy
with their oppressors, that was returned to
power with votes purchased with their money,
and whose confessed leaders declared that trusts
are largely private concerns with which the
government had naught to do. Not only is the
dominant party the apologist of the plutocrats
and the beneficiary of their crimes, but it is
based on that principle of centralization through
which they came into life and on which alone
they can exist. It holds that sovereignty should
be taken from the states and lodged with the
nation — that political powers and privileges
should be wrested from the people and guarded
at the Capitol. It distrusts the people, and even
now demands that your ballot boxes shall be
hedged about by its bayonets. It declares that
a strong government is better than a free govern
ment, and that national authority, backed by
national armies and treasury, is a better guar
antee of peace and prosperity than liberty and
enlightenment diffused among the people. To
defend this policy, that cannot be maintained by
argument or sustained by the love or confidence
of the people, it rallies under its flag the merce
naries of the Republic, the syndicate, the trust,
the monopolist, and the plutocrat, and strength
ening them by grant and protection, rejoices as
they grow richer and the people grow poorer.

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

Confident in the debauching power of money
and the unscrupulous audacity of their creatures,
they catch the spirit of Vanderbilt's defiance and
call aloud from their ramparts, " The people be
damned ! " I charge that this party has bought
its way for twenty years. Its nucleus was the
passion that survived the war, and around this
it has gathered the protected manufacturer, the
pensioned soldier, the licensed monopolist, the
privileged corporation, the unchallenged trust —
all whom power can daunt or money can buy —
and with these in close and constant phalanx it
holds the government against the people. Not a
man in all its ranks that is not influenced by
prejudice or bought by privilege.

What a spectacle, my countrymen ! This free
Republic in the hands of a party that withdraws
sovereignty from the people that its own author
ity may be made supreme, that fans the smol
dering embers of war, and loosing among the
people the dogs of privilege and monopoly to
hunt, and harrow and rend, that its lines may be
made stronger and its ramparts fortified. And
now, it is committed to a crime that is without
precedent or parallel in the history of any peo
ple, and this crime it is obliged by its own ne
cessity as well as by its pledge to commit as soon
as it gets the full reins of power. This crime is
hidden in the bill known as the Service Pension

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THE FARMER AND THE CITIES

Bill, which pensions every man who enlisted for
sixty days for the Union army. Let us ex
amine this pension list. Twelve years ago it
footed 146,000,000. Last year it was $81,000,000.
This year it has already run over $100,000,000.
Of this amount Georgia pays about $3,500,000 a
year. Think of it ! The money that her people
have paid, through indirect taxation into the
treasury, is given, let us say, to Iowa, for that
State just equals Georgia in population. Every
year $3,500,000 wrung from her pockets and
sent into Iowa as pensions for her soldiers.
Since 1865, out of her poverty, Georgia has paid
$51,000,000 as pensions to Northern soldiers, —
one sixth of the value of her whole property.
And now it is proposed to enlarge the pension
list until it includes every man who enlisted for
sixty days. They will not fail. The last Con
gress passed a pension bill that Commissioner
Black — himself a gallant Union general —
studied deliberately, and then told the President
that if he signed it, it would raise the pension
list to $200,000,000, and had it not been for the
love of the people that ran in the veins of Grover
Cleveland and the courage of Democracy which
flamed in his heart, that bill would have been
law to-day. A worse bill will be offered. There
is a surplus of $120,000,000 in the treasury.
While that remains it endangers the protective

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

tariff, behind which the trained captains of the
Republican party muster their men. But let the
pension list be lifted to $200,000,000 a year.
Then the surplus is gone and a deficiency created,
and the protective tariff must be not only per
petuated but deepened, and the vigilance of the
spies and collectors increased to meet the de
mands of the government. And back of it all
will be mustered the army of a million and a
half pensioners, drawing their booty from the
Republican party and giving it in turn their
purchased allegiance and support.

My countrymen, a thousand times I have
thought of that historic scene beneath the apple
tree at Appomattox, of Lee's 8000 ragged, half-
starved immortals, going home to begin anew
amid the ashes of their homes, and the graves of
their dead, the weary struggle for existence, and
Grant's 68,000 splendid soldiers, well fed and
equipped, going home to riot amid the plenty of
a grateful and prosperous people, and I have
thought how hard it was that out of our poverty
we should be taxed to pay their pension, and to
divide with this rich people the crust we scraped
up from the ashes of our homes. And I have
thought when their maimed and helpless soldiers
were sheltered in superb homes, and lapped in
luxury, while our poor cripples limped along the
highway or hid their shame in huts, or broke

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THE FARMER AND THE CITIES

bitter bread in the county poorhouse, how hard
it was that, of all the millions we send them an
nually, we can save not one dollar to go to our
old heroes, who deserve so much and get so little.
And yet we made no complaint. We were will
ing that every Union soldier made helpless by
the war should have his pension and his home,
and thank God, without setting our crippled sol
diers on the curbstone of distant Babylons to beg,
as blind Belisarius did, from the passing stranger.
We have provided them a home in which they
can rest in honorable peace until God has called
them hence to a home not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens. We have not complained
that our earnings have gone to pension Union sol
diers — the maimed soldiers of the Union armies.
But the scheme to rob the people that every man
who enlisted for sixty days, or his widow, shall
be supported at public expense is an outrage that
must not be submitted to. It is not patriotism
— it is politics. It is not honesty — it is plunder.
The South has played a patient and a waiting
game for twenty years, fearing to protest against
what she knew to be wrong in the fear that she
would be misunderstood. I fear that she has
gained little by this course save the contempt of
her enemies. The time has come when she should
stand upright among the States of this Republic
and declare her mind and stand by her convictions.

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

She must not stand silent while this crowning out
rage is perpetrated. It means that the Republi
can party will loot the treasury to recruit its ranks
— that 170,000,000 a year shall be taken from the
South to enrich the North, thus building up one
section against another — that the protective tariff
shall be deepened, thus building one class against
another, and that the party of trusts and mo
nopoly shall be kept in power, the autonomy of
the Republic lost, the government centralized, the
oligarchs established, and justice to the people
postponed. But this party will not prevail, even
though its pension bill should pass, and its pre-
torial God be established in every Northern State.
It was Louis XVI who peddled the taxing privi
leges toTiis friends, and when the people protested
surrounded himself with an army of Swiss mer
cenaries. His minister, Neckar, said to him :
" Sire, I beseech you send away these Swiss and
trust your own people ; " but the king, confident
in his strength and phalanx, buckled it close about
him and plundered the people until his head paid
the penalty of his crime. So this party, barter
ing privileges and setting up classes, may feel se
cure as it closes the ranks of its mercenaries, but
some day the great American heart will burst
with righteous wrath, and the voice of the people,
which is the voice of God, will challenge the trai
tors, and the great masses will rise in their might,

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THE FARMER AND THE CITIES

and, breaking down the defenses of the oligarchs,
will hurl them from power and restore this Re
public to the old moorings from which it had
been swept by the storm.

The government can protect its citizens. It is
of the people, and it shall not perish from the
face of 'the earth. It can top off these colossal
fortunes and, by an income tax, retard their
growth. It can set a limit to personal and
corporate wealth. It can take trusts and syndi
cates by the throat. It can shatter monopoly ;
it can equalize the burden of taxation; it can
distribute its privileges impartially ; it can clothe
with credit its land now discredited at its banks ;
it can lift the burdens from the farmer's shoulders,
give him equal strength to bear them— *- it can
trust the people in whose name this Republic
was founded; in whose courage it was de
fended; in whose wisdom it has been admin
istered, and whose stricken love and confidence
it cannot survive.

But the government, no matter what it does,
does not do all that is needed, nor the most ;
that is conceded, for all true reform must begin
with the people at their homes. A few Sundays
ago I stood on a hill in Washington. My heart
thrilled as I looked on the towering marble of
my country's Capitol, and a mist gathered in my
eyes as, standing there, I thought of its tremendous

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

significance and the powers there assembled, and
the responsibilities there centered — its President,
its congress, its courts, its gathered treasure, its
army, its navy, and its 60,000,000 of citizens. It
seemed to me the best and mightiest sight that
the sun could find in its wheeling course — this
majestic home of a Republic that has taught the
world its best lessons of liberty — and I felt that
if wisdom and justice and honor abided therein,
the world would stand indebted to this temple
on which my eyes rested, and in which the ark of
my covenant was lodged for its final uplifting
and regeneration.

A few days later I visited a country home.
A modest, quiet house sheltered by great trees
and set in a circle of field and meadow, gracious
with the promise of harvest ; barns and cribs
well filled and the old smokehouse odorous with
treasure ; the fragrance of pink and hollyhock
mingling with the aroma of garden and orchard,
and resonant with the hum of bees and poultry's
busy clucking; inside the house, thrift, comfort,
and that cleanliness that is next to godliness, —
the restful beds, the open fireplace, the books
and papers, and the old clock that had held its
steadfast pace amid the frolic of weddings, that
has welcomed in steady measure the newborn
babes of the family, and kept company with the
watchers of the sick bed, and had ticked the solemn

186

THE FARMER AND THE CITIES

requiem of the dead; and the well-worn Bible
that, thumbed by fingers long since stilled, and
blurred with tears of eyes long since closed, held
the simple annals of the family, and the heart
and conscience of the home. Outside stood the
master, strong and wholesome and upright;
wearing no man's collar ; with no mortgage on
his roof, and no lien on his ripening harvest;
pitching his crops in his own wisdom, and selling
them in his own time in his chosen market ;
master of his lands and master of himself. Near
by stood his aged father, happy in the heart and
home of his son. And as they started to the
house the old man's hands rested on the young
man's shoulder, touching it with the knighthood
of the fourth commandment, and laying there the
unspeakable blessing of an honored and grateful
father. As they drew near the door, the old
mother appeared ; the sunset falling on her face,
softening its wrinkles and its tenderness, lighting
up her patient eyes, and the rich music of her
heart trembling on her lips, as in simple phrase
she welcomed her husband and son to their home.
Beyond was the good wife, true of touch and
tender, happy amid her household cares, clean of
heart and conscience, the helpmate and the buckler
of her husband. And the children, strong and
sturdy, trooping down the lane with the lowing
herd, or weary of simple sport, seeking, as truant

187

ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

birds do, the quiet of the old home nest. And I
saw the night descend on that home, falling
gently as from the wings of the unseen dove.
And the stars swarmed in the bending skies, the
trees thrilled with the cricket's cry, the restless
bird called from the neighboring wood, and the
father, a simple man of God, gathering the family
about him, read from the Bible the old, old
story of love and faith, and then went down in
prayer, the baby hidden amid the folds of its
mother's dress, and closed the record of that
simple day by calling down the benediction of
God on the family and the home !

And as I gazed the memory of the great Capi
tol faded from my brain. Forgotten its treasure
and its splendor. And I said, " Surely here —
here in the homes of the people is lodged the ark of
the covenant of my country. Here is its majesty
and its strength. Here the beginning of its power
and the end of its responsibility." The homes of
the people; let us keep them pure and independent,
and all will be well with the Republic. Here is
the lesson our foes may learn — here is work the
humblest and weakest hands may do. Let us in
simple thrift and economy make our homes in
dependent. Let us in frugal industry make
them self-sustaining. In sacrifice and denial let
us keep them free from debt and obligation.
Let us make them homes of refinement in which

188

THE FARMER AND THE CITIES

we shall teach our daughters that modesty and
patience and gentleness are the charms of woman.
Let us make them temples of liberty, and teach
our sons that an honest conscience is every man's
first political law; that his sovereignty rests
beneath his hat, and that no splendor can rob
him and no force justify the surrender of the
simplest right of a free and independent citizen.
And above all let us honor God in our avocations
— anchor them close in His love. Build His al
tars above our hearthstones, uphold them in the
set and simple faith of our fathers, and crown
thern with the Bible — that book of books in
which all the ways of life are made straight and
the mystery of death is made plain. The home
is the source of our national life. Back of the
national Capitol and above it stands the home.
Back of the President and above him stands the
citizen. What the home is, this and nothing
else will the Capitol be. What the citizen wills,
this and nothing else will the President be.

Now, my friends, I am no farmer. I have not
sought to teach you the details of your work,
for I know little of them. I have not commended
your splendid local advantages, for that I shall do
elsewhere. I have not discussed the differences
between the farmer and other classes, for I
believe in essential things there is no difference
between them, and that minor differences should

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ORATIONS AND^ SPEECHES

be sacrificed to the greater interest that depends
on a united people. I seek not to divide our
people, but to unite them. I should despise my
self if I pandered to the prejudice of either class
to win the applause of the other.

But I have noted these great movements that
destroy the equilibrium and threaten the pros
perity of my country, and standing above passion
and prejudice or demagoguery I invoke every
true citizen, fighting from his hearthstone out
ward, with the prattle of his children on his ear,
and the hand of his wife and mother closely
clasped, to determine here to make his home
sustaining and independent, and to pledge eternal
hostility to the forces that threaten our liberties
and the party that stands behind it.

When I think of the tremendous force of the
currents against which we must fight, of the
great political party in that fight, of the count
less host of mercenaries that fight under its flag,
of the enormous powers of government privilege
and monopoly that back them up, I confess my
heart sinks within me, and I grow faint. But I
remember that the servant of Elisha looked
abroad from Samaria and beheld the hosts that
encompassed the city, and said in agonized fear :
" Alas, master, what shall we do ? " and the
answer of Elisha was the answer of every brave
man and faithful heart in all ages : " Fear not,

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THE -FARMER AND THE CITIES

for they that be with us are more than they that
be with them," and this faith opened the eyes of
the servant of the man of God, and he looked
up again, and lo, the air was filled with chariots
of fire, and the mountains were filled with horse
men, and they compassed the city about as a
mighty and unconquerable host. Let us fight in
such faith, and fear not. The air all about us is
filled with chariots of unseen allies, and the
mountains are thronged with unseen knights that
shall fight with us. Fear not, for they that be
with us are more than they that be with them.
Buckle on your armor, gird about your loins,
stand upright and dauntless while I summon
you to the presence of the immortal dead. Your
fathers and mine yet live, though they speak not,
and will consecrate this air with their wheel
ing chariots, and above them and beyond them
to the Lord God Almighty, King of the Hosts in
whose unhindered splendor we stand this morn
ing. Look up to them, be of good cheer, and faint
not, for they shall fight with us when we strike
for liberty and truth, and all the world, though
it be banded against us, shall not prevail against
them.

191

THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

A speech delivered at the annual banquet of the Boston
Merchants' Association, December, 1889

MB. PRESIDENT : Bidden by your invitation to
a discussion of the race problem — forbidden by
occasion to make a political speech — I appre
ciate in trying to reconcile orders with pro
priety the predicament of the little maid, who,
bidden to learn to swim, was yet adjured, " Now,
go, my darling, hang your clothes on a hickory
limb, and don't go near the water."

The stoutest apostle of the church, they say,
is the missionary, and the missionary, wherever
he unfurls his flag, will never find himself in
deeper need of unction and address than I,
bidden to-night to plant the standard of a
Southern Democrat in Boston's banquet hall, and
discuss the problem of the races in the home of
Phillips and of Sumner. But, Mr. President, if
a purpose to speak in perfect frankness and sin
cerity ; if earnest understanding of the vast
interests involved ; if a consecrating sense of
what disaster may follow further misunderstand
ing and estrangement, if these may be counted
to steady undisciplined speech and to strengthen

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THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

an untried arm — then, sir, I find the courage to
proceed.

Happy am I that this mission has brought my
feet at last to press New England's historic soil,
and my eyes to the knowledge of her beauty
and her thrift. Here, within touch of Plymouth
Rock and Bunker Hill — where Webster thun
dered and Longfellow sang, Emerson thought and
Channing preached — here in the cradle of Amer
ican letters, and almost of American liberty, I
hasten to make the obeisance that every Amer
ican owes New England when first he stands
uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange
apparition ! This stern and unique figure, carved
from the ocean and the wilderness, its majesty
kindling and growing amid the storms of winters
and of wars, until at last the gloom was broken,
its beauty disclosed in the sunshine, and the
heroic workers rested at its base, while startled
kings and emperors gazed and marveled that from
the rude touch of this handful, cast on a bleak
and unknown shore, should have come the em
bodied genius of human government and the
perfected model of human liberty ! God bless
the memory of those immortal workers and
prosper the fortunes of their living sons and
perpetuate the inspirations of their handiwork.

Two years ago, sir, I spoke some words in New
York that caught the attention of the North.
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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

As I stand here to reiterate, as I have done every
where, every word I then uttered — to declare
that the sentiments I then avowed were univer
sally approved in the South — I realize that the
confidence begotten by that speech is largely re
sponsible for my presence here to-night. I should
dishonor myself if I betrayed that confidence by
uttering one insincere word or by witholding one
essential element of the truth. Apropos of this
last, let me confess, Mr. President — before the
praise of New England has died on my lips —
that I believe the best product of her present life
is the procession of 17,000 Vermont Democrats
that for twenty-two years, undiminished by death,
unrecruited by birth or conversion, have marched
over their rugged hills, cast their Democratic
ballots, and gone back home to pray for their
unregenerate neighbors, and awake to read the
record of 25,000 Republican majority. May God
of the helpless and the heroic help them — and
may their sturdy tribe increase !

Far to the south, Mr. President, separated from
this section by a line, once defined in irrepressible
difference, once traced in fratricidal blood, and
now, thank God, but a vanishing shadow, lies
the fairest and richest domain of this earth. It
is the home of a brave and hospitable people.
There, is centered all that can please or prosper
humankind. A perfect climate above a fertile

194

THE, RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

soil yields to the husbandman every product of
the temperate zone. There, by night the cotton
whitens beneath the stars, and by day the wheat
locks the sunshine in its bearded sheaf. In the
same field the clover steals the fragrance of the
wind, and the tobacco catches the quick aroma
of the rains. There, are mountains stored with
exhaustless treasures ; forests, vast and primeval,
and rivers that, tumbling or loitering, run wan
ton to the sea. Of the three essential items of all
industries — cotton, iron, and wood — that region
has easy control. In cotton, a fixed monopoly;
in iron, proven supremacy ; in timber, the reserve
supply of the Republic. From this assured and
permanent advantage, against which artificial con
ditions cannot much longer prevail, has grown
an amazing system of industries. Not maintained
by human contrivance of tariff or capital, afar
off from the fullest and cheapest source of supply,
but resting in divine assurance, within touch of
field and mine and forest — not set amid costly
farms from which competition has driven the
farmer in despair, but amid cheap and sunny
lands, rich with agriculture, to which neither
season nor soil has set a limit — this system of
industries is mounting to a splendor that shall
dazzle and illumine the world.

That, sir, is the picture and the promise of my
home — a land better and fairer than I have told

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

you, and yet but fit setting, in its material excel
lence, for the loyal and gentle quality of its citi
zenship. Against that, sir, we have New England,
recruiting the Republic from its sturdy loins,
shaking from its overcrowded hives new swarms
of workers and touching this land all over with
its energy and its courage. And yet, while in
the El Dorado of which I have told you, but 15 per
cent of its lands are cultivated, its mines scarcely
touched, and its population so scant that, were it
set equidistant, the sound of the human voice
could not be heard from Virginia to Texas —
while on the threshold of nearly every house in
New England stands a son, seeking with troubled
eyes some new land to which to carry his modest
patrimony, the strange fact remains that in 1880
the South had fewer Northern-born citizens than
she had in 1870, fewer in '70 than in '60. Why
is this ? Why is it, sir, though the sectional line
be now but a mist that the breath may dispel,
fewer men of the North have crossed it over to
the South than when it was crimson with the
best blood of the Republic, or even when the
slaveholder stood guard every inch of its way ?

There can be but one answer. It is the very
problem we are now to consider. The key that
opens that problem will unlock to the world the
fairer half of this Republic, and free the halted
feet of thousands whose eyes are already kindled

196

THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

with its beauty. Better than this, it will open
the hearts of brothers for thirty years estranged,
and clasp in lasting comradeship a million hands
now withheld in doubt. Nothing, sir, but this
problem, and the suspicions it breeds, hinders a
clear understanding and a perfect union. Noth
ing else stands between us and such love as bound
Georgia and Massachusetts at Valley Forge and
Yorktown, chastened by the sacrifices at Manas-
sas and Gettysburg, and illumined with the com
ing of better work and a nobler destiny than was
ever wrought with the sword or sought at the
cannon's mouth.

If this does not invite your patient hearing
to-night, hear one thing more. My people, your
brothers in the South — brothers in blood, in
destiny, in all that is best in our past and future
— are so beset with this problem that their very
existence depends upon its right solution. Nor
are they wholly to blame for its presence. The
slave ships of the Republic sailed from your
ports, the slaves worked in our fields. You will
not defend the traffic, nor I the institution. But
I do hereby declare that in its wise and humane
administration, in lifting the slave to heights of
which he had not dreamed in his savage home,
and giving him a happiness he has not yet found
in freedom, our fathers left their sons a saving
and excellent heritage. In the storm of war this

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

institution was lost. I thank God as heartily as
you do that human slavery is gone forever from
the American soil.

But the freedman remains. With him a prob
lem without precedent or parallel. Note its ap
palling conditions. Two utterly dissimilar races
on the same soil, with equal political and civil
rights, almost equal in numbers, but terribly
unequal in intelligence and responsibility, each
pledged against fusion, one for a century in ser
vitude to the other, and freed at last by a deso
lating war, the experiment sought by neither,
but approached by both with doubt — these are
the conditions. Under these, adverse at every
point, we are required to carry these two races
in peace and honor to the end. Never, sir, has
such a task been given to mortal stewardship.
Never before in this Republic has the white race
divided on the rights of an alien race. The red
man was cut down as a weed, because he hindered
the way of the American citizen. The yellow
man was shut out of this Republic because he is
an alien and inferior. The red man was owner
of the land, the yellow man highly civilized and
assimilable, but they hindered both sections —
and are gone !

But the black man, affecting but one section,
is clothed with every privilege of government and
pinned to the soil, and my people commanded to

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THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

make good at any hazard and at any cost, his
full and equal heirship of American privilege
and prosperity. It matters not that wherever
the whites and blacks have touched, in any era
or any clime, there has been irreconcilable vio
lence. It matters not that no two races, how
ever similar, have lived anywhere at any time
on the same soil with equal rights in peace. In
spite of these things we are commanded to make
good this change of American policy which has
not perhaps changed American prejudice, to make
certain here what has elsewhere been impossible
between whites and blacks, and to reverse, under
the very worst conditions, the universal verdict
of racial history. And driven, sir, to this super
human task with an impatience that brooks no
delay, a rigor that accepts no excuse, and a sus
picion that discourages frankness and sincerity.
We do not shrink from this trial. It is so inter
woven with our industrial fabric that we cannot
disentangle it if we would — so bound up in our
honorable obligation to the world, that we would
not if we could. Can we solve it ? The God
who gave it into our hands, He alone can know.
But this the weakest and wisest of us do know :
we cannot solve it with less than your tolerant
and patient sympathy, with less than the knowl
edge that the blood that runs in your veins is our
blood, and that when we have done our best,

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

whether the issue be lost or won, we shall feel
your strong arms about us and hear the beating
of your approving hearts.

The resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men
of the South, the men whose genius made glo
rious every page of the first seventy years of
American history, whose courage and fortitude
you tested in five years of the fiercest war,
whose energy has made bricks without straw
and spread splendor amid the ashes of their
war- wasted homes — these men wear this prob
lem in their hearts and their brains, by day and
by night. They realize, as you cannot, what
this problem means — what they owe to this
kindly and dependent race — the measure of
their debt to the world in whose despite they
defended and maintained slavery. And though
their feet are hindered in its undergrowth and
their march encumbered with its burdens, they
have lost neither the patience from which comes
clearness nor the faith from which comes cour
age. Nor, sir, when in passionate moments is
disclosed to them that vague and awful shadow,
with its lurid abysses and its crimson stains, into
which I pray God they may never go, are they
struck with more of apprehension than is needed
to complete their consecration!

Such is the temper of my people. But what
of the problem itself ? Mr. President, we need

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THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

not go one step further unless you concede right
here that the people I speak for are as honest,
as sensible, and as just as your people, seeking as
earnestly as you would in their place, rightly to
solve the problem that touches them at every
vital point. If you insist that they are ruffians,
blindly striving with bludgeon and shotgun to
plunder and oppress a race, then I shall sacrifice
my self-respect and tax your patience in vain.
But admit that they are men of common sense
and common honesty, — wisely modifying an en
vironment they cannot wholly disregard, guiding
and controlling as best they can the vicious and
irresponsible of either race, compensating error
with frankness and retrieving in patience what
they lose in passion, and conscious all the time
that wrong means ruin, — admit this, and we
may reach an understanding to-night.

The President of the United States in his late
message to Congress, discussing the plea that the
South should be left to solve this problem, asks :
" Are they at work upon it ? What solution do
they offer? When will the black man cast a
free ballot ? When will he have the civil rights
that are his ? " I shall not here protest against
the partisanry that, for the first time in our his
tory in time of peace, has stamped with the
great seal of our government a stigma upon the
people of a great and loyal section, though I

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

gratefully remember that the great dead soldier,
who held the helm of State for the eight stormy
years of reconstruction, never found need for
such a step ; and though there is no personal
sacrifice I would not make to remove his cruel
and unjust imputation on my people from the
archives of my country !

But, sir, backed by a record on every page
of which is progress, I venture to make earnest
and respectful answer to the questions that are
asked. I bespeak your patience, while with
vigorous plainness of speech, seeking your judg
ment rather than your applause, I proceed step
by step. We give to the world this year a crop
of 7,500,000 bales of cotton, worth $450,000,000,
and its cash equivalent in grain, grasses, and
fruit. This enormous crop could not have come
from the hands of sullen and discontented labor.
It comes from peaceful fields, in which laughter
and gossip rise above the hum of industry and
contentment runs with the singing plow.

It is claimed that this ignorant labor is de
frauded of its just hire. I present the tax books
of Georgia, which show that the negro, 25 years
ago a slave, has in Georgia alone 110,000,000 of
assessed property, worth twice that much. Does
not that record honor him and vindicate his
neighbors? What people, penniless, illiterate,
has done so well? For every Afro- American agi-

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THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

tator, stirring the strife in which alone he pros
pers, I can show you a thousand negroes, happy
in their cabin homes, tilling their own land by
day, and at night taking from the lips of their
children the helpful message their State sends
them from the schoolhouse door. And the school-
house itself bears testimony. In Georgia we
added last year $ 250,000 to the school fund, mak
ing a total of more than $1,000,000 — and this in
the face of prejudice not yet conquered — of the
fact that the whites are assessed for 8368,000,000,
the blacks for 110,000,000, and yet 49 per cent of
the beneficiaries are black children — and in the
doubt of many wise men if education helps, or
can help, our problem. Charleston, with her
taxable values cut half in two since 1860, pays
more in proportion for public schools than Bos
ton. Although it is easier to give much out of
much than little out of little, the South with one
seventh of the taxable property of the country,
with relatively larger debt, having received only
one twelfth as much public land, and having back
of its tax books none of the half billion of bonds
that enrich the North — and though it pays an
nually $26,000,000 to your section as pensions —
yet gives nearly one sixth of the public school
fund. The South since 1865 has spent $122,-
000,000 in education, and this year is pledged to
$37,000,000 for State and city schools, although

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

the blacks, paying one thirtieth of the taxes, get
nearly one half of the fund.

Go into our fields and see whites and blacks
working side by side, on our buildings in the
same squad, in our shops at the same forge.
Often the blacks crowd the whites from work,
or lower wages by greater need or simpler
habits, and yet are permitted because we want
to bar them from no avenue in which their feet
are fitted to tread. They could not there be
elected orators of the white universities, as they
have been here, but they do enter there a hundred
useful trades that are closed against them here.
We hold it better and wiser to tend the weeds in
the garden than to water the exotic in the win
dow". In the South, there are negro lawyers,
teachers, editors, dentists, doctors, preachers,
multiplying with the increasing ability of their
race to support them. In villages and towns they
have their military companies equipped from the
armories of the State, their churches and societies
built and supported largely by their neighbors.
What is the testimony of the courts ? In penal
legislation we have steadily reduced felonies to
misdemeanors, and have led the world in miti
gating punishment for crime, that we might save,
as far as possible, this dependent race from its
own weakness. In our penitentiary record 60 per
cent of the prosecutors are negroes, and in every

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THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

court the negro criminal strikes the colored juror,
that white men may judge his case. In the
North, one negro in every 466 is in jail — in the
South only one in 1865. In the North the per
centage of negro prisoners is six times as great as
native whites — in the South, only four times as
great. If prejudice wrongs him in Southern
courts, the record shows it to be deeper in North
ern courts.

I assert here, and a bar as intelligent and up
right as the bar of Massachusetts will solemnly
indorse my assertion, that in the Southern courts,
from highest to lowest, pleading for life, liberty,
or property, the negro has distinct advantage be
cause he is a negro, apt to be overreached, op
pressed — and that this advantage reaches from
the juror in making his verdict to the judge in
measuring his sentence. Now, Mr. President,
can it be seriously maintained that we are terror
izing the people from whose willing hands come
every year $1,000,000,000 of farm crops? Or
have robbed a people, who twenty-five years from
unrewarded slavery have amassed in one State
820,000,000 of property ? Or that we intend to
oppress the people we are arming every day ? Or
deceive them when we are educating them to the
utmost limit of our ability? Or outlaw them
when we work side by side with them ? Or re-
enslave them under legal forms when for their

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

benefit we have even imprudently narrowed the
limit of felonies and mitigated the severity of
law? My fellow-countryman, as you yourself
may sometimes have to appeal to the bar of hu
man judgment for justice and for right, give to
my people to-night the fair and unanswerable
conclusion of these incontestable facts.

But it is claimed that under this fair seeming
there is disorder and violence. This I admit.
And there will be until there is one ideal com
munity on earth after which we may pattern.
But how widely it is misjudged! It is hard to
measure with exactness whatever touches the
negro. His helplessness, his isolation, his cen
tury of servitude, — these dispose us to emphasize
and magnify his wrongs. This disposition, in
flamed by prejudice and partisanry, has led to in
justice and delusion. Lawless men may ravage
a county in Iowa and it is accepted as an inci
dent — in the South a drunken row is declared
to be the fixed habit of the community. Regula
tors may whip vagabonds in Indiana by platoons,
and it scarcely arrests attention — a chance col
lision in the South among relatively the same
classes is gravely accepted as evidence that one
race is destroying the other. We might as well
claim that the Union was ungrateful to the col
ored soldiers wrho followed its flag, because a
Grand Army post in Connecticut closed its doors

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THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

to a negro veteran, as for you to give racial sig
nificance to every incident in the South or to
accept exceptional grounds as the rule of our so
ciety. I am not one of those who becloud Amer
ican honor with the parade of the outrages of
either section, and belie American character by
declaring them to be significant and representa
tive. I prefer to maintain that they are neither,
and stand for nothing but the passion and the
sin of our poor fallen humanity. If society,
like a machine, were no stronger than its weakest
part, I should despair of both sections. But
knowing that society, sentient and responsible in
every fiber, can mend and repair until the whole
has the strength of the best, I despair of neither.

These gentlemen who come with me here, knit
into Georgia's busy life as they are, never saw, I
dare assert, an outrage committed on a negro !
And if they did, not one of you would be swifter
to prevent or punish. It is through them, and
the men who think with them — making nine
tenths of every Southern community — that these
two races have been carried thus far with less of
violence than would have been possible anywhere
else on earth. And in their fairness and courage
and steadfastness, more than in all the laws
that can be passed or all the bayonets that can
be mustered, is the hope of our future.

When will the black cast a free ballot ? When
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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

ignorance anywhere is not dominated by the will
of the intelligent; when the laborer anywhere
casts a vote unhindered by his boss ; when the
vote of the poor anywhere is not influenced by
the power of the rich; when the strong and the
steadfast do not everywhere control the suffrage
of the weak and shiftless — then and not till then
will the ballot of the negro be free. The white
people of the South are banded, Mr. President,
not in prejudice against the blacks — not in sec
tional estrangement, not in the hope of political
dominion — but in a deep and abiding necessity.
Here is this vast ignorant and purchasable vote

— clannish, credulous, impulsive, and passionate

— tempting every art of the demagogue, but in
sensible to the appeal of the statesman. Wrongly
started, in that it was led into alienation from its
neighbor and taught to rely on the protection of
an outside force, it cannot be merged and lost
in the two great parties through logical currents,
for it lacks political conviction and even that
information on which conviction must be based.
It must remain a faction — strong enough in
every community to control on the slightest divi
sion of the whites. Under that division it be
comes the prey of the cunning and unscrupulous
of both parties. Its credulity is imposed on, its
patience inflamed, its cupidity tempted, its im
pulses misdirected — and even its superstition

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THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

made to play its part in a campaign in which every
interest of society is jeopardized and every ap
proach to the ballot box debauched. It is against
such campaigns as this — the folly and the bitter
ness and the danger of which every Southern
community has drunk deeply — that the white
people of the South are banded together. Just
as you in Massachusetts would be banded if 300,-
000 black men — not one in a hundred able to
read his ballot — banded in a race instinct, hold- j
ing against you the memory of a century of slav
ery, taught by your late conquerors to distrust
and oppose you, had already travestied legislation
from your statehouse, and in every species of folly
or villainy had wasted your substance and ex
hausted your credit.

But admitting the right of the whites to unite
against this tremendous menace, we are chal
lenged with the smallness of our vote. This has
long been flippantly charged to be evidence, and
has now been solemnly and officially declared to
be proof of political turpitude and baseness on
our part. Let us see. Virginia — a State now
under fierce assault for this alleged crime — cast,
in 1888, 75 per cent of her vote. Massachusetts,
the State in which I speak, 60 per cent of her
vote. Was it suppression in Virginia and natural
causes in Massachusetts? Last month Virginia
cast 69 per cent of her vote, and Massachusetts,
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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

fighting in every district, cast only 49 per cent
of hers. If Virginia is condemned because 31
per cent of her vote was silent, how shall this
State escape in which 51 per cent was dumb ?
Let us enlarge this comparison. The sixteen
Southern States in 1888 cast 67 per cent of their
total vote — the six New England States but 63
per cent of theirs. By what fair rule shall the
stigma be put upon one section, while the other
escapes ? A congressional election in New York
last week, with the polling place within touch of
every voter, brought out only 6000 votes of 28,-
000 — and the lack of opposition is assigned as
the natural cause. In a district in my State, in
which an opposition speech has not been heard
in ten years, and the polling places are miles apart
— under the unfair reasoning of which my sec
tion has been a constant victim — the small vote
is charged to be proof of forcible suppression.
In Virginia an average majority of 10,000, under
hopeless division of the minority, was raised to
42,000 ; in Iowa, in the same election, a majority
of 32,000 was wiped out, and an opposition ma
jority of 8000 was established. The change of
42,000 votes in Iowa is accepted as political
revolution — in Virginia an increase of 30,000 on
a safe majority is declared to be proof of political
fraud. I charge these facts and figures home,
sir, to the heart and conscience of the American

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THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

people, who will not assuredly see one section
condemned for what another section is excused !
If I can drive them through the prejudice of
the partisan, and have them read and pondered
at the fireside of the citizen, I will rest on the
judgment there formed and the verdict there
rendered !

It is deplorable, sir, that in both sections a
larger percentage of the vote is not regularly
cast, but more inexplicable that this should be
so in New England than in the South. What in
vites the negro to the ballot box ? He knows
that, of all men, it has promised him most and
yielded him least. His first appeal to suffrage
was the promise of " forty acres and a mule."
His second, the threat that Democratic success
meant his reenslavement. Both have proved
false in his experience. He looked for a home,
and he got the freedman's bank. He fought
under the promise of the loaf, and in victory was
denied the crumbs. Discouraged and deceived,
he has realized at last that his best friends are
his neighbors, with whom his lot is cast, and
whose prosperity is bound up in his — and that
he has gained nothing in politics to compensate
the loss of their confidence and sympathy that
is at last his best and his enduring hope. And
so, without leaders or organization — and lack
ing the resolute heroism of my party friends in

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

Vermont that makes their hopeless march over
the hills a high and inspiring pilgrimage — he
shrewdly measures the occasional agitator, bal
ances his little account with politics, touches up
his mule and jogs down the furrow, letting the
mad world jog as it will !

The negro vote can never control in the South,
and it would be well if partisans in the North
would understand this. I have seen the white
people of a State set about by black hosts until
their fate seemed sealed. But, sir, some brave
man, banding them together, would rise, as
Elisha rose in beleaguered Samaria, and touching
their eyes with faith, bid them look abroad to
see the very air " filled with the chariots of
Israel and the horsemen thereof." If there is
any human force that cannot be withstood, it is
the power of the banded intelligence and responsi
bility of a free community. Against it, numbers
and corruption cannot prevail. It cannot be for
bidden in the law or divorced in force. It is the
inalienable right of every free community — and
the just and righteous safeguard against an ig
norant or corrupt suffrage. It is on this, sir,
that we rely in the South. Not the cowardly
menace of mask or shotgun ; but the peaceful
majesty of intelligence and responsibility, massed
and unified for the protection of its homes and
the preservation of its liberty. That, sir, is our

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THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

reliance and our hope, and against it all the
powers of the earth shall not prevail.

It was just as certain that Virginia would
come back to the unchallenged control of her
white race — that before the moral and ma
terial power of her people once more unified,
opposition would crumble until its last des
perate leader was left alone vainly striving
to rally his disordered hosts — as that night
should fade in the kindling glory of the sun. You
may pass force bills, but they will not avail. You
may surrender your own liberties to federal
election law, you may submit, in fear of a neces
sity that does not exist, that the very form of
this government may be changed — this old
State that holds in its charter the boast that « it
is a free and independent commonwealth " - it
may deliver its election machinery into the hands
of the government it helped to create — but
never, sir, will a single State of this Union, North
or South, be delivered again to the control of
an ignorant and inferior race. We wrested our /
State government from negro supremacy when j
the Federal drumbeat rolled closer to the ballot
box and Federal bayonets hedged it deeper about
than will ever again be permitted in this free
government. But, sir, though the cannon of this
Republic thundered in every voting district of
the South, we still should find in the mercy of

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

God the means and the courage to prevent its re-
establishment !

I regret, sir, that my section, hindered with
this problem, stands in seeming estrangement to
the North. If, sir, any man will point out to
me a path down which the white people of the
South divided may walk in peace and honor, I
will take that path though I take it alone — for
at the end, and nowhere else, I fear, is to be
found the full prosperity of my section and the
full restoration of this Union. But, sir, if the
negro had not been enfranchised, the South would
have been divided and the Republic united. What
solution, then, can we offer for this problem ?
Time alone can disclose it to us. We simply re
port progress and ask your patience. If the prob
lem be solved at all — and I firmly believe it will,
though nowhere else has it been — it will be
solved by the people most deeply bound in inter
est, most deeply pledged in honor to its solution.
I had rather see my people render back this ques
tion rightly solved than to see them gather all the
spoils over which faction has contended since
Catiline conspired and Caesar fought.

Meantime we treat the negro fairly, meas
uring to him justice in the fullness the strong
should give to the weak, and leading him
in the steadfast ways of citizenship that he
may no longer be the prey of the unscrupulous

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THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

and the sport of the thoughtless. We open
to him every pursuit in which he can prosper,
and seek to broaden his training and capac
ity. We seek to hold his confidence and friend
ship, and to pin him to the soil with ownership,
that he may catch in the fire of his own hearth
stone that sense of responsibility the shiftless
can never know. And we gather him into that
alliance of intelligence and responsibility that,
though it now runs close to racial lines, welcomes
the responsible and intelligent of any race. By
this course, confirmed in our judgment and jus
tified in the progress already made, we hope to
progress slowly but surely to the end.

The love we feel for that race you cannot
measure nor comprehend. As I attest it here, the
spirit of my old black mammy from her home up
there looks down to bless, and through the tumult
of this night steals the sweet music of her croon-
ings as thirty years ago she held me in her black
arms and led me smiling into sleep. This scene
vanishes as I speak, and I catch a vision of an
old Southern home, with its lofty pillars, and its
white pigeons fluttering down through the golden
air. I see women with strained and anxious
faces and children alert yet helpless. I see night
come down with its dangers and its apprehen
sions, and in a big homely room I feel on my tired
head the touch of loving hands, now worn and

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

wrinkled, but fairer to me yet than the hands of
mortal woman, and stronger yet to lead me than
the hands of mortal man — as they lay a mother's
blessing there while at her knees, the truest
altar I yet have found, I thank God that she is
safe in her sanctuary, because her slaves, sen
tinel in the silent cabin or guard at her chamber
door, put a black man's loyalty between her and
danger.

I catch another vision. The crisis of battle —
a soldier struck, staggering, fallen. I see a slave,
scuffling through the smoke, winding his black
arms about the fallen form, reckless of the hur
tling death, bending his trusty face to catch the
words that tremble on the stricken lips, so wres
tling meantime with agony that he would lay down
his life in his master's stead. I see him by the
weary bedside, ministering with uncomplaining
patience, praying with all his humble heart that
God will lift his master up, until death comes in
mercy and in honor to still the soldier's agony
and seal the soldier's life. I see him by the open
grave, mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering for
the death of him who in life fought against his
freedom. I see him when the mound is heaped
and the great drama of his life is closed, turn
away and with downcast eyes and uncertain step
start out into new and strange fields, faltering,
struggling, but moving on, until his shambling

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THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

figure is lost in the light of this better and brighter
day. And from the grave comes a voice saying :
" Follow him ! Put your arms about him in his
need, even as he put his about me. Be his friend
as he was mine." And out into this new world
— strange to me as to him, dazzling, bewildering
both — I follow ! And may God forget my people
when they forget these.

Whatever the future may hold for them —
whether they plod along in the servitude from
which they have never been lifted since the Cy-
renian was laid hold upon by the Roman soldiers
and made to bear the cross of the fainting Christ ;
whether they find homes again in Africa, and
thus hasten the prophecy of the psalmist who
said, " And suddenly Ethiopia shall hold out her
hands unto God " ; whether, forever dislocated
and separated, they remain a weak people beset by
stronger, and exist as the Turk, who lives in the
jealousy rather than in the conscience of Europe ;
or whether in this miraculous Republic they
break through the caste of twenty centuries and,
belying universal history, reach the full stature
of citizenship, and in peace maintain it — we shall
give them uttermost justice and abiding friend
ship. And whatever we do, into whatever seem
ing estrangement we may be driven, nothing shall
disturb the love we bear this Republic, or mitigate
our consecration to its service.

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

I stand here, Mr. President, to profess no new
loyalty. When General Lee, whose heart was
the temple of our hopes and whose arm was
clothed with our strength, renewed his allegiance
to the government at Appomattox, he spoke from
a heart too great to be false, and he spoke for
every honest man from Maryland to Texas.
From that day to this, Hamilcar has nowhere in
the South sworn young Hannibal to hatred and
vengeance — but everywhere to loyalty and to
love. Witness the soldier standing at the base
of a Confederate monument above the graves of
his comrades, his empty sleeve tossing in the
April wind, adjuring the young men about him
to serve as honest and loyal citizens the govern
ment against which their fathers fought. This
message, delivered from that sacred presence, has
gone home to the hearts of my fellows ! And,
sir, I declare here, if physical courage be always
equal to human aspiration, that they would die,
sir, if need be, to restore this Republic their
fathers fought to dissolve !

Such, Mr. President, is this problem as we see
it ; such is the temper in which we approach it ;
such the progress made. What do we ask of
you ? First, patience ; out of this alone can
come perfect work. Second, confidence ; in this
alone can you judge fairly. Third, sympathy ;
in this you can help us best. Fourth, give us

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THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH

your sons as hostages. When you plant your
capital in millions, send your sons that they may
help know how true are our hearts and may help
swell the Anglo-Saxon current until it can carry
without danger this black infusion. Fifth, loy
alty to the Republic — for there is sectionalism in
loyalty as in estrangement. This hour little
needs the loyalty that is loyal to one section and
yet holds the other in enduring suspicion and
estrangement. Give us the broad and perfect
loyalty that loves and trusts Georgia alike with
Massachusetts — that knows no South, no North,
no East, no West ; but endears with equal and
patriotic love every foot of our soil, every State
of our Union.

A mighty duty, sir, and a mighty inspiration
impels every one of us to-night to lose in patriotic
consecration whatever estranges, whatever di
vides. We, sir, are Americans, and we fight for
human liberty. The uplifting force of the
American idea is under every throne on earth.
France, Brazil — these are our victories. To re
deem the earth from kingcraft and oppression —
this is our mission. And we shall not fail. God
has sown in our soil the seed of His millennial
harvest, and He will not lay the sickle to the
ripening crop until His full and perfect day has
come. Our history, sir, has been a constant and
expanding miracle from Plymouth Rock and

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

Jamestown all the way — aye, even from the
hour when, from the voiceless and trackless ocean,
a new world rose to the sight of the inspired
sailor.

As we approach the fourth centennial of that
stupendous day, when the old world will come to
marvel and to learn, amid our gathered treasures,
let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past
with the spectacle of a Republic compact, united,
indissoluble in the bonds of love, loving from the
Lakes to the Gulf, the wounds of war healed in
every heart as on every hill — serene and re
splendent at the summit of human achievement
and earthly glory — blazing out the path, and
making clear the way up which all the nations
of the earth must come in God's appointed time !

PLYMOUTH ROCK AND DEMOCRACY

A speech delivered before the Bay State Club, Boston,
December, 1889. This speech, which was made the day follow
ing the delivery of the preceding, was wholly impromptu, and
was Grady's last public utterance.

Mr. President and gentlemen : I am confident
you will not expect a speech from me this
afternoon, especially as my voice is in such a
condition that I can hardly talk. I am free to
say that it is not a lack of ability to talk, because
I am a talker by inheritance. My father was
an Irishman, my mother was a woman; both
talked. I come by it honestly.

I don't know how I could take up any discus
sion here or any topic apart from the incidents of
the past two days. I saw this morning Plymouth
Rock. I was pulled up on top of it and was
told to make a speech.

It reminded me of an old friend of mine, Judge
Dooley, of Georgia, who was a very provoking
fellow and was always getting challenged to duels
and never fighting them. He always got out of
it by being smarter than the other fellow. One
day he went out to fight a man with one leg,
and he insisted on bringing along a bee gum and
sticking one leg into it so he would have no

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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

more flesh exposed than his antagonist. On the
occasion I am thinking of, however, he went out
to fight with a man who had St. Vitus's dance,
and the fellow stood before him holding the
pistol cocked and primed, his hand shaking. The
judge went quietly and got a forked stick and
stuck it up in front of him.

« What's that for ? " said the man.

« I want you to shoot with a rest, so that if
you hit me you will bore only one hole. If
you shoot me that way, you will fill me full of
holes with one shot."

I was reminded of that and forced to tell my
friends that I could not think of speaking on top
of Plymouth Rock without a rest.

But I said this, and I want to say it here
again, for I never knew how true it was till I
had heard myself say it and had taken the evi
dence of my voice, as well as my thoughts —
that there is no spot on earth that I had rather
have seen than that. I have a boy who is the
pride and the promise of my life, and God knows
I want him to be a good citizen and a good man,
and there is no spot in all this broad Republic
nor in all this world where I had rather have
him stand to learn the lessons of right citizenship,
of individual liberty, of fortitude and heroism
and justice, than the spot on which I stood this
morning, reverent and uncovered.

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Now, I do not intend to make a political
speech, although when Mr. Cleveland expressed
some surprise at seeing me here, I said, " Why,
I am at home now ; I was out visiting last
night." I was visiting mighty clever folks, but
still I was visiting. Now I am at home.

It is the glory and the promise of Democracy,
it seems to me, that its success means more
than partisanry can mean. I have been told
that what I said helped the Democratic party in
the State. Well, the chief joy that I feel at
that, and that you feel, is that, beyond that and
above it, it helped those larger interests of the
Republic, and those essential interests of human
ity that for seventy years the Democratic party
has stood for, being the guarantor and defender.

Now, Mr. Cleveland last night made — I trust
this will not get into the papers — one of the
best Democratic speeches I ever heard in my life,
and yet all around sat Republicans cheering him
to the echo. It is just simply because he pitched
his speech on a high key, and because he said
things that no man, no matter how partisan he
was, could gainsay.

Now it seems to me we do not care much for
political success in the South — for a simple
question of spoils or of patronage. We wanted
to see one Democratic administration since
General Lee surrendered at Appomattox, just to

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prove to the people of this world that the South
was not the wrong-headed and impulsive and
passionate section she was represented to be. I
heard last night from Mr. Cleveland, our great
leader, as he sat by me, that he held to be the
miracle of modern history the conservatism and
the temperance and the quiet with which the
South accepted his election, and the few office-
seekers in comparison that came from that
section to besiege and importune him.

Now it seems to me that the struggle in this
country, the great fight, the roar and din of
which we already hear, is a fight against the
consolidation of power, the concentration of cap
ital, the diminution of local sovereignty and the
dwarfing of the individual citizen. Boston is
the home of one section of a nationalist party
that claims that the remedy for all our troubles,
the way in which Dives, who sits inside the gate,
shall be controlled, and the poor Lazarus who
sits outside shall be lifted up, is for the govern
ment to usurp the functions of the citizen and
take charge of all his affairs. It is the Demo
cratic doctrine that the citizen is the master, and
that the best guarantee of this government is not
garnered powers at the capital, but diffused in
telligence and liberty among the people.

My friend, General Collins — who, by the
way, captured my whole State and absolutely

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conjured the ladies — when he came down there
talked about this to us, and he gave us a train
of thought that we have improved to advantage.

It is the pride, I believe, of the South, with
her simple faith and her homogeneous people,
that we elevate there the citizen above the party,
and the citizen above everything. We teach a
man that his best guide at last is his own con
science, that his sovereignty rests beneath his
hat, that his own right arm and his own stout
heart are his best dependence ; that he should rely
on his State for nothing that he can do for him
self, and on his government for nothing that his
State can do for him ; but that he should stand
upright and self-respecting, dowering his family in
the sweat of his brow, loving to his State, loyal
to his Republic, earnest in his allegiance wher
ever it rests, but building at last his altars above
his own hearthstone and shrining his own liberty
in his own heart. That is a sentiment that I
would not have been afraid to avow last night.
And yet it is mighty good Democratic doctrine,
too.

I went to Washington the other day, and I
stood on the Capitol hill, and my heart beat quick
as I looked at the towering marble of my coun
try's Capitol, and a mist gathered in my eyes as
I thought of its tremendous significance, of the
armies and the treasury, and the judges and the
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ORATIONS AND SPEECHES

President, and the Congress and the courts, and
all that was gathered there ; and I felt that the
sun in all its course could not look down on a
better sight than that majestic home of a
Republic that has taught the world its best
lessons of liberty. And I felt that if honor and
wisdom and justice abided therein, the world
would at last owe that great house, in which
the ark of the covenant of my country is lodged,
its final uplifting and its regeneration.

But a few days afterwrards I went to visit a
friend in the country, a modest man, with a
quiet country home. It was just a simple, un
pretentious house, set about with great trees and
encircled in meadow and field rich with the
promise of harvest ; the fragrance of pink and
hollyhock in the front yard was mingled with
the aroma of the orchard and the garden, and
the resonant clucking of poultry and the hum of
bees. Inside was quiet, cleanliness, thrift, and
comfort.

Outside there stood my friend, the master —
a simple, independent, upright man, with no
mortgage on his roof, no lien on his growing
crops — master of his land and master of him
self. There was the old father, an aged and
trembling man, but happy in the heart and home
of his son. And, as he started to enter his
home, the hand of the old man went down on

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the young man's shoulder, laying there the un
speakable blessing of an honored and honorable
father, and ennobling it with the knighthood of
the fifth commandment. And as we approached
the door the mother came, a happy smile lighting
up her face, while with the rich music of her
heart she bade her husband and her son welcome
to their home. Beyond was the housewife, busy
with her domestic affairs, the loving helpmate of
her husband. Down the lane came the children
after the cows, singing sweetly, as like birds
they sought the quiet of their rest.

So the night came down on that house, falling
gently as the wing of an unseen dove. And the
old man, while a startled bird called from the
forest and the trees thrilled with the cricket's
cry, and the stars were falling from the sky,
called the family around him and took the Bible
from the table and called them to their knees.
The little baby hid in the folds of its mother's
dress while he closed the record of that day by
calling down God's blessing on that simple home.
While I gazed, the vision of the marble Capitol
faded ; forgotten were its treasuries and its
majesty ; and I said, " Surely here in the homes
of the people lodge at last the strength and the re
sponsibility of this government, the hope and the
promise of this Republic."

My friends, that is the Democracy of the South,
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that is the Democratic doctrine we preach ; a
doctrine, sir, that is writ above our hearthstones.
We aim to make our homes, poor as they are,
self-respecting and independent. We try to make
them temples of refinement, in which our
daughters may learn that woman's best charm
and strength are her gentleness and her grace,
and temples of liberty in which our sons may
learn that no power can justify and no treasure
repay for the surrender of the slightest right of a
free individual American citizen.

Now you do not know how we love you Demo
crats. Had we better print that ? Yes, we do, of
course we do. If a man does not love his home
folks, whom should he love ? We know how gal
lant a fight you have made here, not as hard and
hopeless as our friends in Vermont, but still an up
hill fight. You have done better, much better.

Now, gentlemen, I have some mighty good
Democrats here. There is one of the fattest and
best in the world, sitting right over there [point
ing to his partner, Mr. Howell~\.

You want to know about the South. My friends,
we representative men will tell you about it. I
just want to say that we have had a hard time
down there.

When my partner came out of the war, he
didn't have any breeches. That is an actual fact.
Well, his wife, one of the best women that ever

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lived, reared in the lap of luxury, took her old
woolen dress that she had worn during the war
— and it had been a garment of sorrow and con
secration and of heroism — and cut it up and
made a good pair of breeches. He started with
that pair of breeches and with f 5 in gold as his
capital, and he scraped up boards from amid the
ashes of his home, and built him a shanty which
love made a home and which courtesy made
hospitable. And now I believe he has with him
three pairs of breeches and several pairs at home.
We have prospered down there.

I attended a funeral once in Pickens County
in my State. A funeral is not usually a cheerful
object to me unless I could select the subject. I
think I could, perhaps, without going a hundred
miles from here, find the material for one or two
cheerful funerals. Still, this funeral was pecul
iarly sad. It was a poor " one gallus " fellow,
whose breeches struck him under the armpits
and hit him at the other end about the knee —
he didn't believe in d&collete, clothes. They bur
ied him in the midst of a marble quarry : they
cut through solid marble to make his grave; and
yet a little tombstone they put above him was
from Vermont. They buried him in the heart
of a pine forest, and yet the pine coffin was im
ported from Cincinnati. They buried him within
touch of an iron mine, and yet the nails in his

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coffin and the iron in the shovel that dug his
grave were imported from Pittsburg. They bur
ied him by the side of the best sheep-grazing
country on the earth, and yet the wool in the
coffin bands and the coffin bands themselves were
brought from the North. The South didn't fur
nish a thing on earth for that funeral but the
corpse and the hole in the ground. There they
put him away and the clods rattled down on his
coffin, and they buried him in a New York coat
and a Boston pair of shoes and a pair of breeches
from Chicago and a shirt from Cincinnati, leaving
him nothing to carry into the next world with
him to remind him of the country in which he
lived and for which he fought for four years, but
the chilled blood in his veins and the marrow in
his bones.

Now we have improved on that. We have got
the biggest marble-cutting establishment on earth
within a hundred yards of the grave. We have
got a half-dozen woolen mills right around it,
and iron mines, and iron furnaces, and iron
factories. We are coming to meet you. We
are going to take a noble revenge, as my friend,
Mr. Carnegie, said last night, by invading every
inch of your territory with iron, as you invaded
ours twenty-nine years ago.

[A voice: I want to know if the tariff built
up those industries down there ?]

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Mr. Grady: The tariff? Well, to be per
fectly frank with you, I think it helped some ;
but you can bet your bottom dollar that we are
Democrats straight from the soles of our feet to
the top of our heads, and Mr. Cleveland will not
have, if he runs again, which I am inclined to
think he ought to do, a stronger following.

Now, I want to say one word about the re
ception we had here. It has been a constant
revelation of hospitality and kindness and
brotherhood from the whole people of this city
to myself and my friends. It has touched us
beyond measure.

I was struck with one thing last night. Every
speaker that arose expressed his confidence in the
future and lasting glory of this Republic. There
may be men, and there are, who insist on getting
up fratricidal strife, and who infamously fan the
embers of war that they may raise them again
into a blaze. But just as certain as there is a
God in the heavens, when those noisy insects of
the hour have perished in the heat that gave them
life and their pestilent tongues have ceased, the
great clock of this Republic will strike the slow-
moving tranquil hours, and the watchman from
the street will cry, « All is well with the Re
public ; all is well."

We bring to you, from hearts that yearn for
your confidence and for your love, the message of

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fellowship from our homes. This message comes
from consecrated ground. The fields in which
I played were the battlefields of this Republic,
hallowed to you with the blood of your soldiers
who died in victory, and doubly sacred to us
with the blood of ours who died undaunted in
defeat. All around my home are set the moun
tains and hills down which the gray flag fluttered
to defeat, and through which American soldiers
from either side charged like demigods ; and I do
not think I could bring you a false message from
those old hills and those sacred fields — wit
nesses twenty years ago, in their red desolation,
of the deathless valor of American arms and the
quenchless bravery of American hearts, and in
their white peace and tranquillity to-day of the
imperishable Union of the American States and
the indestructible brotherhood of the American
people.

It is likely that I will not again see Bosto-
nians assembled together. I therefore want to
take this occasion to thank you, and my excel
lent friends of last night and those friends who
accompanied us this morning, for all that you
have done for us since we have been in your
city, and to say that whenever any of you come
South just speak your name, and remember that
Boston or Massachusetts is the watchword, and
we will meet you at the gates.

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" The monarch may forget the crown

That on his head so late hath been ;
The bridegroom may forget the bride

Was made his own but yester e'en ;
The mother may forget the babe

That smiled so sweetly on her knee ;
But forget thee will I ne'er, Glencairn,

And all that thou hast done for me. "

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